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Hits  and  Misses 


MAR  21  1966 


Hits  and  Misses 


By 


Charles  Frederic  Goss 

Author  of  **The  Optimist,"  etc. 


Fleming  H.  Revell  Company- 
Chicago  :  New  York  :  Toronto : 
Mdcccxcix 


Copyrighted,  1899 
By  Fleming  H.   Revell  Company 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


I  Adam-Zad,  or  **  The  Truce  of  the  Bear'*     ii 

II  The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred       3  i 

III  Laying  a  Modern  Specter    .  .  '53 

IV  The  Very  First  Thing  .  .  .75 

V     The  Discovery  of  God  is  the  Clarifica- 
tion of  the  God  Consciousness  .  .      93 

VI     Hope,  the  Practical  Equivalent  of 

Knowledge   .  .  ,  .  .Ill 

VII  Righteousness  is  Rightness    .  .  •  ^33 

VIII  The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow       .  •  ^55 

IX  He  Can  Believe,  Who  ^///Believe  .  171 

X  Temple-Building,  a  Universal  Instinct  .  195 


Desiring  that  the  kindest,  the  most  appreciative, 
and  the  most  faithful  Congregation  should  be  able  to 
recall  (if  they  ever  cared  to)  some  of  the  words  ad- 
dressed them  in  the  past  year,  I  have  selected  these 
nine  sermons  for  publication,  and  dedicate  them  in 
love  to  my  dear  friends  of  the  Avondale  Presbyterian 
Church. 

Charles  Frederic  Goss 

Cincinnati,  May  24,  iSqq. 


Adam-Zad,  or  "The  Truce 
of  the  Bear'* 


When  he  shows  as  seeking  quarter,  with  paws  like 

hands  in  prayer, 
That  is  the  time  of  peril — the  time  of  the  Truce  of 

the  Bear. 

Over  and  over  the  story,  ending  as  he  began, 
There  is  no  truce  with  Adam-Zad,  the  bear  that  looks 
like  a  man. 

— Rudyard  Kipling. 


Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth 
peace  J  good  will  tozvard  men! — Luke  ii,  14. 

No  merely  human  mind  has  ever  been  able 
to  foresee  all  the  consequences  of  any  single 
event.  There  is  often  a  startling  disproportion 
in  the  causes  and  results  of  human  history. 
The  mountain  labors  and  brings  forth  a  mouse, 
and  the  mouse,  with  his  tiny  teeth,  liberates  a 
lion  or  lets  in  a  flood.  Immensities  dwindle  to 
nothings,  and  nothings  expand  to  immensi- 
ties. More  often  than  otherwise,  God  is  in  the 
still,  small  voice  rather  than  the  earthquake, 
and  the  weak  things  are  more  likely  to  con- 
found the  mighty  than  to  be  confounded  by 
them. 

Nothing  is  more  common  or  more  trivial  as  a 
passing  event,  than  the  birth  of  a  little  child. 
Nothing  is  more  helpless,  nothing  more  insig- 
nificant than  a  newborn  baby.  One  of  them 
is  ushered  into  being  at  every  beat  of  the  sec- 
ond hand  of  the  clock,  but  it  is  hardly  more 
than  once  in  a  century  that  one  of  them  leaves 
more  of  a  mark  upon  history  than  a  vessel  on 
an  ocean.     And  yet  that  event  which  is  so  like- 

II 


Hits  and  Misses 

ly  to  be  the  most  insignificant,  is  capable  of  be- 
coming the  most  stupendous. 

Nineteen  hundred  years  ago  a  Httle  child  was 
born  in  Bethlehem  and  cradled  in  a  manger.  It 
was  no  stronger  and,  perhaps,  no  more  beau- 
tiful than  others,  but  that  birth  has  proven  to 
be  the  greatest  event  of  time.  That  little,  help- 
less child  has  been  the  pivot  of  human  his- 
tory, and  every  century  makes  it  plainer  that 
the  government  of  the  world  is  soon  to  rest 
upon  those  then  so  tiny  shoulders. 

On  this  anniversary  of  his  birth,  it  is  fitting 
that  his  followers  should  confess  their  faith 
in  him  and  once  more  renew  their  allegiance. 
Here,  then,  in  the  presence  of  God,  we  pro- 
nounce our  creed.  We  believe  that  Jesus  Christ 
was  Son  of  Man  and  Son  of  God — the  Savior 
of  the  world. 

Among  all  the  varied  and  significant  events 
of  that  illustrious  night  in  which  the  Savior 
of  mankind  was  born,  I  select  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  angels  (that  his  birth  was  the  her- 
ald of  peace  to  a  world  whose  garments  had 
been  rolled  in  blood  since  time  began)  as  fit- 
ting for  this  hour. 

A  few  months  ago  another  event  transpired, 
whose  significance  no  prophet  nor  son  of 
prophet  can  foresee.  One  of  the  most  power- 
ful monarchs  on  the  globe  put  forth  a  sum- 

12 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

mens  to  all  the  people  of  the  world  to  unite 
in  bringing  about  that  universal  peace  which 
the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ  had  heralded.  His 
proposals,  stated  briefly,  are:  i.  That  there 
should  be  declared  a  truce  of  God  for  five  years. 
2.  That  during  that  period  the  governments 
should  not  increase  their  expenditures  on  arma- 
ments beyond  the  figure  stated  by  them  at  the 
conference  as  the  maximum  of  their  need.  3. 
That  some  international  agreement  should  (if 
disputes  should  arise  between  the  signatories 
of  this  pact)  bind  them  always  to  invite  the 
mediation  of  neutral  powers  before  appealing 
to  the  sword. 

No  living  man  can  tell  whether  this  proposal 
is  an  empty  whirlwind  of  subtle  diplomacy  or 
the  still,  small  voice  of  God.  Some  have  greeted 
it  with  derision  and  distrust;  but  for  one — I 
have  listened  to  it  as  to  an  oracle.  I  could  no 
more  suspect  a  man  in  the  position  of  the  Czar 
of  trifling  with  so  serious  a  matter  before  the 
whole  human  race,  than  before  the  eyes  of  the 
heart-searching  God.  If  he  is  not  in  earnest, 
he  is  the  most  colossal  fool,  or  the  most  despic- 
able villain  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

Without  the  least  pretense  of  being  able  to 
divine  his  motives,  I  claim  the  privilege  of 
believing  in  the  Czar's  sincerity,  and  I  sum- 
mon all  trustful  people,  who  put  their  confi- 

13 


Hits  and  Misses 

dence  in  the  good  of  human  nature  and  the 
power  of  the  Prince  of  Peace,  to  give  him  their 
humble  and  their  hearty  aid. 

The  possibiHty  of  the  disarmament  of  na- 
tions, the  destruction  of  militarism,  and  the 
coming  of  a  bloodless  era  of  good  will,  is 
worthy  of  our  consideration. 

Let  us  thoughtfully  balance  over  against 
each  other,  the  reasons  which  experience  has 
afforded  for  believing  that  war  is  to  be  the  per- 
manent condition  of  human  life,  and  that  its 
ultimate  condition  may  be  one  of  peace. 

The  arguments  for  supposing  that  men  must 
fight  as  long  as  the  race  lives,  are  numerous  and 
impressive.  They  are  the  minor  chords  in  the 
sweet,  sad  music  of  humanity. 

There  has  never  been  a  moment  since  his- 
tory preserved  a  record  of  events,  when  all  the 
world  has  been  at  peace.  The  warriors  are 
always  on  the  stage.  One  struggle  does  not 
cease  before  another  begins.  The  echoes  of 
cannon  and  of  musket,  the  moans  of  wounded 
and  of  dying  are  never  absent  from  our  ears. 
If  what  *'has  been"  affords  a  clew  to  what 
"must  be,"  it  is  as  certain  that  we  must  fight, 
as  that  we  must  labor — to  exist.  No  wonder 
that  De  Vogue  exclaimed,  "All  experience  and 
history  teaches  that  war  cannot  be  altogether 
suppressed  so  long  as  two  men   are  left  on 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

earth  with  a  crust  of  bread,  a  piece  of  money 
and  a  woman — between  them." 

Wars  have  been,  in  many  instances  at  least, 
among  the  most  beneficent  influences  in  the 
progress  of  civilization.  A  hundred  bloody  and 
terrible  conflicts  could  be  selected  which  the 
blindest  advocate  of  peace  would  not  dare 
eliminate  from  history.  Who  would  have  the 
temerity  to  wish  the  American  Revolution  had 
never  occurred? 

Say  what  we  will,  and  stagger  as  we  will, 
the  conviction  is  forced  upon  us  that  in  the 
rude  and  undeveloped  periods,  before  men  had 
begun  to  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die,  such  cus- 
toms as  idolatry,  polygamy  and  slavery  have 
been  necessary  phases  of  the  great  upward 
march  of  humanity.  They  have  saved  men 
from  evils  worse  than  themselves.  And  so  has 
war.  Without  war  (so  far  at  least  as  we  can 
see)  tyranny  would  have  been  an  eternal  form 
of  government,  and  injustice  the  eternal  law  of 
life.  "War,"  said  de  Maistre,  "is  divine  by 
virtue  of  its  supernatural  results."  And  no 
logic  has  yet  been  developed  to  prove  that  what 
has  done  so  much  good  is  necessarily  wrong. 
"Until  you  can  prove  that  a  single  blow  in  self- 
defense  is  wrong,  you  cannot  prove  that  a  com- 
pound blow  in  self-defense  is  wrong." 

Man  is  a  fighting  animal.    There  are  explo- 

15 


Hits  and  Misses 

sives  in  every  subterranean  chamber  of  his 
soul.  A  cannon  asleep  on  a  parapet  may  dream 
that  it  is  a  plowshare  or  a  cradle — until  the 
gunner  pulls  the  lanyard.  And  a  man  dreams 
that  he  hates  war  until  he  smells  powder  or 
sees  gore.  In  every  drop  of  masculine  blood 
the  virus  of  battle  boils.  The  love  of  the  sword 
seems  as  ineradicable  as  that  of  the  money  bag. 
We  are  as  keen  to  military  glory  as  our  fathers 
were.  You  who  hate  war,  are  thrilled  by  it  as 
a  harp  string  by  a  master's  hand.  Who  shall 
deliver  me  from  this  inheritance  of  countless 
generations  of  Indian  fighters  and  buccaneers 
and  crusaders  and  marauders?  ''War  and 
Niagara  thunder  to  a  music  of  their  own,"  and 
our  pulses  thunder  with  them. 

The  world  is  prepared  for  war  and  dream- 
ing of  war  to-day  as  never  in  its  history.  There 
was  more  and  bloodier  fighting  in  the  days  of 
Tamerlane  and  Genghis  Khan,  but  those  mon- 
sters would  have  turned  pale  at  the  sight  of  the 
armies  and  navies  of  modern  Europe.  War  is 
in  the  air  as  well  as  in  the  blood.  And  sup- 
pose that  the  nations  of  the  earth  should  de- 
cide to  lay  their  armors  off  and  hang  them  in 
the  banquet  hall!  How  could  it  be  done? 
What  would  become  of  these  millions  of  sol- 
diers when  they  left  their  camps,  and  what 
would  become  of  the  peaceful  workers  whom 

i6 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

they  would  crowd  from  bench  and  loom  and 
forge?  Here  is  a  political  problem  for  the 
peace  propagandist !  And  if  this  problem 
would  baffle  the  political  economist,  another 
would  paralyze  the  statesman.  There  are  cer- 
tain questions  of  government  which  nothing 
but  war  has  ever  been  able  to  decide,  and  we 
tremble  at  the  suspicion  that  there  always  will 
be.  For  one  man  who  says,  "the  pen  is  might- 
ier than  the  sword,"  a  hundred  declare  that 
what  you  write  with  the  pen  fades,  but  what 
you  write  with  the  sword  stays.  Down  deep 
in  the  heart  of  every  prince  and  every  peasant, 
every  soldier  and  every  sage,  lurks  the  belief 
or  the  suspicion  that  "might"  of  government 
is  the  only  available  standard  of  "right."  Every 
nation  is  a  fighting  machine  and  the  strongest 
wins  and  rules  and  lasts.  It  is  a  dread  suspi- 
cion that  questions  are  never  settled  until  they 
are  settled  with  a  gun  !  But  it  is  hard  to  escape 
it,  and  the  fear  that  arbitration  is  only  a  sub- 
terfuge for  warbitration,  and  that  under  the 
mask  of  the  statesman,  you  will  always  find  a 
soldier — haunts  and  unsettles  us  as  we  try  to 
dream  of  universal  peace. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  fears  of  the  perpetuity 
of  war. 

Now  for  the  hopes  of  the  downfall  of  mili- 


17 


Hits  and  Misses 

tarism.  Are  there  any?  Are  there  major 
chords,  as  well  as  minor  ones?    Let  us  listen. 

There  is  in-  the  heart  of  humanity  a  grow- 
ing consciousness  of  the  horror  of  war.  The 
little  rills  of  sympathy  and  pity  are  filling  up 
a  mighty  reservoir.  The  love  of  battle  is  being 
counteracted  by  the  hate  of  blood.  The  glory 
of  war  is  being  offset  by  its  shame.  The  senti- 
ments with  which  men  looked  on  the  dead  who 
covered  the  decks  of  the  Spanish  fleet  at  San- 
tiago are  fifty  per  cent  milder  than  those  with 
which  they  regarded  the  corpses  on  the  decks  of 
the  galleons  at  Salamis.  When  before,  in  the 
history  of  humanity,  did  the  world  ever  hear 
an  exclamation  like  that  from  the  lips  of  Cap- 
tain Philip  of  the  Texas,  ''Don't  cheer,  boys, 
the  poor  devils  are  dying!"  At  the  rate  at 
which  this  feeling  of  tenderness  is  growing,  the 
day  wull  come  when  it  will  be  as  impossible 
for  man  to  contemplate  a  battlefield,  as  for  old 
Telemachus  to  witness  a  gladiatorial  combat  in 
an  arena. 

You  have  only  to  recall  the  cruelties  which 
this  sentiment  has  already  abolished,  to  see  its 
power.  Study  the  projet  of  the  Brussels  con- 
ference and  the  convention  of  Geneva.  The 
use  of  poison  or  of  poisoned  weapons,  the 
treacherous  murder  of  enemy  subjects,  the  kill- 
ing of  an  unarmed  enemy,  the  refusal  to  give 

i8 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

quarter,  the  causing  of  unnecessary  suffering 
or  destruction  of  property,  the  abuse  of  the 
flag  of  truce  or  of  the  wearers  of  the  cross — 
all  these  have  become  impossible  because  the 
refined  sensibilities  of  men  cannot  endure  them. 
A  Libby  prison  would  be  as  inconceivable  in 
a  fin-de-siecle  war,  as  another  ''murder  of  the 
innocents."  Our  victorious  Nation  has  just 
revealed  that  it  had  no  stomach  even  to  take 
an  "indemnity !"  If  this  goes  on  we  shall  be- 
come as  incapable  of  fighting  as  doves.  Our 
battles  will  be  as  bloodless  as  Don  Quixote's. 

There  is  a  growing  sense  of  the  suicidal  re- 
sults of  the  maintenance  of  enormous  standing 
armies.  It  is  becoming  preposterous  because 
impossible.  "The  great  nations  of  Europe  are 
dying  of  hunger  so  as  to  procure  means  of 
killing  each  other,"  exclaimed  Frederic  Passy, 
and  Enrico  Ferri  declared  that  they  will  soon 
be  unable  to  support  the  armor  in  which  they 
are  encasing  themselves,  for  lack  of  adequate 
nutrition ! 

Into  such  a  hideous  contradiction  and  dilem- 
ma are  the  races  permitting  themselves  to  be 
forced !  It  is  necessary  to  strike  with  the  sword 
to  live,  but  it  is  impossible  to  nourish  the  arm 
because  of  the  cost  of  the  weapon !  The  armor 
will  have  to  support  upon  his  feet,  the  starving 
and  emaciated  soldier  whom  it  envelopes! 

19 


Hits  and  Misses 

Like  Alice's  cat,  which  became  all  smiles,  so- 
ciety will  become  all  army! 

Well,  nature  is  automatic  in  her  operations. 
She  will  cure  militarism  by  poverty  and  hun- 
ger. A  full  stomach  may  mean  an  empty  scab- 
bard, but  an  empty  stomach  will  also  mean  a 
full  scabbard !  It  will  some  time  be  as  neces- 
sary to  disarm  in  order  to  exists  as  it  is  now 
to  arm  in  order  to  subsist. 

There  is  a  growing  intimacy  and  intricacy  in 
the  relationships  sustained  by  the  nations  of 
the  earth  to  each  other,  which  constantly  ren- 
ders war  more  difficult  and  dangerous.  The 
consciousness  of  the  solidarity  of  interests 
among  them  all  is  deepening,  and  a  new  sense 
of  brotherhood  is  awakening  in  this  conscious- 
ness. A  few  years  ago  China  and  India  might 
have  torn  each  other  to  pieces  and  the  welfare 
of  the  world  would  have  suffered  scarcely  more 
than  when  two  thunder  clouds  met  and  burst. 
But  to-day,  so  intimate  is  the  relationship  ex- 
isting between  all  lands,  so  inextricably  are 
the  commercial  interests  interwoven,  that  a  war 
in  any  part  of  the  world  sends  a  shiver  to 
every  other.  So  delicate  is  the  equilibrium  of 
national  forces  that  it  is  in  a  permanent  state 
of  instability,  and  a  scrimmage  on  a  frontier 
between  two  unknown  tribes  of  savages  is  as 
dangerous   to  the  political   explosives  in  the 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

council  chambers  of  the  world,  as  the  scratch- 
ing of  a  match  or  the  blow  of  a  hammer  in  a 
dynamite  mill. 

There  is  a  growing  sensitiveness  to  the  es- 
sential unreason  of  a  chronic  state  of  war. 
Men  are  becoming  incapable  of  entertaining 
the  idea  of  an  eternal  butchery  and  a  perpetual 
militarism  as  a  philosophic  theory.  The  bare 
possibility  that  such  a  state  can  continue  for- 
ever and  be  the  normal  condition  of  the  life 
of  rational  beings,  excites  an  increasing  mental 
horror.  The  race  would  at  length  be  driven  to 
suicide  by  such  philosophy.  It  is  too  horri- 
ble! The  universal  consciousness  could  not 
endure  the  strain  of  a  conviction  that  a  system 
of  such  bitterness  and  horror  and  devastation 
was  the  condition  of  existence ! 

But  stronger  than  all,  is  that  ever  clarifying 
ideal  of  an  ultimate  millennium,  in  the  soul  of 
the  universal  humanity,  which  has  been  haunted 
by  a  dream  of  peace  for  many  centuries.  A 
true  ''city  of  God"  swims  before  it.  This  vision 
never  dies !  And  dreams,  ideals  and  visions 
always  conquer!  As  surely  as  matter  must 
yield  at  last  to  the  touch  of  spirit,  destiny  must 
be  molded  by  the  visions  in  the  soul !  These 
visions  are  taking  possession  of  new  thousands 
of  individuals  every  year  and  of  new  millions 
every  century !     No  reasoning  discourages  it, 

21 


Hits  and  Misses 

and  no  doubt  represses  it.  It  is  a  faith,  an  in- 
stinct in  the  soul,  and  it  was  implanted  by  its 
Creator.  It  is  not  to  be  distrusted  because  we 
cannot  conceive  it  as  accomplished.  It  is  not 
to  be  distrusted  because  we  cannot  foresee  the 
method  of  its  attainment,  nor  conceive  the  con- 
trary of  a  condition  of  war. 

The  savage  Indians  who  were  continually 
cutting  each  other's  throats  in  the  dim  glades 
of  our  aboriginal  forests  could  not  have  formed 
a  mental  concept  of  millions  of  people  living 
together  on  their  battlefields  in  perfect  peace 
and  quietness.  And  yet  the  advance  from  that 
condition  of  savage  warfare  to  ours  of  civilized 
peace,  was  a  thousand  fold  more  difficult  than 
will  be  the  progress  from  the  condition  of  the 
struggling  nations  of  to-day  to  the  period  when 
war  shall  be  known  no  more  forever. 

The  dream  abides !  The  vision  beatific  floats 
before  the  inner  eye! 

And  every  century  of  progress  brings  it  more 
within  the  range  of  comprehension,  for  more 
and  more  the  ape  and  tiger  are  dying  in  us.  It 
will  be  no  harder  for  us  to  emancipate  our- 
selves from  war  than  from  other  mighty  in- 
cubuses and  nightmares  of  evil.  Look  at  what 
civilization  has  outgrown !  Do  you  imagine 
that  when  humanity  lived  in  a  state  of  polyg- 
amy or  slavery  or  idolatry,  it  knew  how  it  was 

22 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

to  secure  its  liberation  ?  It  is  within  the  mem- 
ory of  most  of  us  now  present,  that  the  concep- 
tion of  the  eHmination  of  slavery  from  life 
seemed  as  impossible  as  the  conception  of  the 
elimination  of  drunkenness  or  adultery.  And 
yet  it  is  gone !  Gone  like  a  mist,  a  cloud ! 
Gone  from  America !  gone  from  Europe !  gone 
from  Russia !  driven  to  the  jungles  of  Africa, 
and,  like  some  mythical  hydra-headed  monster, 
breathing  its  last  gasps  in  the  recesses  of  those 
impenetrable  forests ! 

Nothing  is  to  be  conceived  as  impossible  be- 
cause we  cannot  imagine  how  it  is  to  be  ac- 
complished. It  is  not  necessary  that  we  should 
conceive  how  these  evils  are  to  be  removed. 
Their  destruction  is  wrought  by  that  omnipo- 
tent power  that  is  working  through  our  human 
nature  as  silently  and  irresistibly  as  through 
atoms  and  rain  drops  and  seeds.  How  easily 
the  most  stupendous  miracles  are  wrought  by 
omnipotence !  "How  are  we  ever  to  rid  our- 
selves of  this  fearful  pall  of  ice  and  snow  that 
wraps  us  in  a  winding  sheet  of  death?"  wail 
the  rivers,  lakes,  and  plains ! 

It  is  not  necessary  that  they  should  know. 
God  will  solve  their  problems  for  them.  With 
one  warm  kiss  of  light  he  sets  them  wholly 
free! 

And  he  performs  his  ministry  of  evolution 

23 


Hits  and  Misses 

into  life,  as  easily  as  that  of  emancipation  from 
death. 

"How  are  we  ever  to  clothe  our  naked  limbs 
with  vernal  robes,  and  decorate  the  floor  on 
which  we  stand  with  flowers  again?" — the 
forests  moan,  when  wintry  winds  go  howling 
through  them. 

They  cannot  do  it  by  themselves.  But,  with 
one  slow  tilt  of  the  old  earth  on  its  axis,  God 
turns  its  face  a  little  more  toward  the  sun. 
And  lo,  the  sap  asleep  within  the  frozen  ducts 
awakes  and  winds  along  its  ways.  On  every 
limb  and  every  branch  ten  thousand  thousand 
buds  appear,  and  swell  and  burst,  and  lo ! 

"Nature  hangs  her  mantle  green 
On  every  living  blooming  tree, 
And  spreads  her  sheet,  of  daisies  white. 
Out  o'er  the  flowering  lea." 

"Comes  the  spring,  with  all  its  splendor, 
All  its  buds  and  all  its  blossoms, 
All  its  flowers  and  leaves  and  grasses." 

"How  am  I  to  slough  off  my  old  vices?" 
cries  humanity.     God  knows ! 

How  am  I  to  adorn  myself  with  new  vir- 
tues ?  God  knows !  How  is  the  millennium  to 
come?  He  can  bring  it.  Some  time  he  will 
give  the  old  earth  a  quiet  tilt  up  to  the  face  of 
the  Sun  of  Righteousness ! 

How  little  we  know  of  the  great  subterra- 
nean movements  of  life !    A  colony  of  ants  in 

24 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

the  hold  of  a  man-of-war  knows  as  much  about 
where  it  is  going  as  we  know  which  way  this 
old  sidereal  system  is  traveling.  And  who  of 
us  all  knows  what  the  race  is  coming  to  or  can 
measure  its  progress?  I  have  a  notion  that 
these  busy  millions  of  men  are  running  back 
and  forth  and  in  and  out  and  round  about  upon 
a  great,  movable  platform  that  slides  along  up- 
on its  way,  carrying  them  so  silently  with  it 
that  they  are  conscious  of  no  motion  but  their 
own.  For  one,  I  believe  in  the  platform  and 
in  the  machinery  that  moves  it ;  but,  more  than 
all  in  Him  who  works  the  machinery. 

There  is  a  higher  power  than  ward  politi- 
cians, or  even  senators  and  presidents  and 
kings.  I  pin  my  faith  to  the  Wonderful,  the 
Councilor,  the  mighty  God,  the  everlasting 
Father,  the  Prince  of  Peace.  I  believe  in  the 
song  of  the  angels  and  in  the  Christ.  I  think 
the  fires  are  now  burning  in  the  forges  where 
the  sword  is  to  be  beaten  into  the  plowshare 
and  the  spear  into  the  pruning  hook.  I  see 
the  kindling  flames.  I  hear  the  first  blows  of 
the  sledges,  the  clang,  clang  of  the  mighty  ham- 
mers. 

I  do  not  believe  that  we  know  how  nor  when, 
but  I  believe  that  it  is  our  own  duty  to  be 
men  of  peace.  I  am  as  sensitive  to  the  fascina- 
tion of  war  as  any  poor,  bedeviled  human  be- 

25 


Hits  and  Misses 

ing  who  is  trying  to  emancipate  himself  from 
the  brute  and  tiger;  but  I  confess  it  with 
shame.  It  is  the  survival  of  the  animal.  It  is 
my  inheritance  from  the  beast. 

But  I  at  least  love  peace  better  than  war.  I 
prefer  the  spindle  to  the  saber,  ten  thousand 
times. 

I  will  never  vote  for  war  until  every  other 
expedient  has  been  exhausted.  It  is  a  last  re- 
sort. It  may  be  a  necessity  for  centuries  to 
come;  but  I  will  never  believe  in  it  as  the  ul- 
timate condition  of  existence.  I  will  write 
against  it,  speak  against  it,  oppose  it,  smite  it, 
fight  it  until  I  die.  And  when  anywhere  on 
earth,  whether  in  a  Quaker  meeting  house  or 
on  a  Russian  throne,  a  human  voice  is  lifted 
on  behalf  of  peace,  I  swear  to  lend  my  hand. 

Let  us  cherish  the  dream.  Let  us  nourish 
the  vision.  We  may  not  know  how  to  realize 
it;  but  if,  as  individuals,  we  are  always  ready 
to  do  our  part,  the  race  redemption  will  some 
time  be  accomplished. 

The  movements  of  the  great  flocks  of  mi- 
gratory birds  are  not  accomplished  by  a  coun- 
cil and  agreement,  but  each  individual  obeys 
an  impulse  of  his  own,  and  so  the  flight  takes 
place. 

Let  us  see  that  our  own  individual  hearts 
are  ready,  for  we  can  never  tell  when  God  shall 

26 


Adam-Zad,  or  the  Truce  of  the  Bear 

give  the  word  for  the  swarming  millions  to 
move  up  to  a  higher  plane.  And  we  shall  go, 
not  by  council  or  agreement,  but  by  moving 
individual  units. 

And  now,  if  you  are  ready,  let  us  sign  our 
names  to  these  cards,  and  send  our  blessing 
and  the  offer  of  our  help  to  the  mighty  mon- 
arch who  has  conceived  the  colossal  design  of 
a  universal  disarmament. 


27 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most 
Sacred 


''Diving  and  finding  no  pearls  in  the  sea, 
Blame  not  the  ocean,  the  fault  is  in  thee." 

"In  every  experience  there  is  good.  A  geode  is  a 
rough  stone  on  its  exterior,  hut  inside  are  beautiful 
crystals." 

"This  I  beheld,  or  dreamed  it  in  a  dream: 

There  spread  a  cloud  of  dust  along  a  plain;    . 

And  underneath  the  cloud,  or  in  it,  raged 

A  furious  battle,  and  men  yelled,  and  swords 

Shocked  upon  swords  and  shields.    A  prince's  banner 

Wavered,  then  staggered  backward,  he?nmed  by  foes. 

A  craven  hung  along  the  battle's  edge 

And  thought — 'Had  I  a  sword  of  keener  steel — 

That  blue  blade  that  the  King's  son  bears — but  this 

Blunt  thing!'    He  snapt  and  Hung  it  from  his  hand, 

And,  lowering,  crept  away  and  left  the  Held. 

Then  came  the  King's  son,  wounded,  sore  bestead 

And  weaponless,  and  saw  the  broken  sword. 

Hilt  buried  in  the  dry  and  trodden  sand. 

And  ran  and  snatched  it,  and  with  battle  shout 

Lifted  afresh,  he  hewed  his  enemy  down 

And  saved  a  great  cause  on  that  heroic  day." 

— Edward  Rowland  Sill. 


What  God  hath  cleansed,  that  call  not  thou 
common. — Acts  x,  i^. 

The  Apostle  Peter  experienced  through  his 
contact  with  Jesus  Christ,  three  sudden  and 
wonderful  awakenings.  First,  when  it  dawned 
upon  him  that  he  actually  stood  in  the  presence 
of  the  Son  of  God. 

Second,  when  he  was  struck  as  by  lightning 
with  the  guilty  consciousness  of  his  depravity 
in  his  desertion  of  his  Friend. 

Third,  when  in  this  bewildering  vision  upon 
the  housetop,  he  learned  that  his  whole  con- 
ception of  the  vulgarity  and  badness  of  com- 
mon things,  had  been  erected  upon  a  stupid 
and  radical  misconception. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  mental  or  spiritual 
enlargement  is  the  resultant  of  a  series  of  such 
rude  awakenings — in  each  one  of  which  the  old 
foundations  crumble,  and  the  old  horizons  are 
violently  thrust  backward.  These  awakenings 
are  always  surprising,  often  painful,  but  in  the 
long  run  are  always  redemptive  and  beatific. 

Without  wasting  our  time  in  vain  repetitions 

31 


Hits  and  Misses 

of  a  familiar  narrative,  let  us  seize  upon  the 
essential  fact  of  this  experience. 

The  Apostle  had  yielded  to  the  soporific  in- 
fluence of  a  balmy  breeze  which  blew  across 
a  Syrian  housetop,  and  sunk  into  a  slumber. 
He  carried  with  him  into  the  world  of  dreams 
an  undisturbed  assurance  that  certain  kinds  of 
food,  and  certain  kinds  of  actions,  and  certain 
kinds  of  people  were  essentially  common,  vul- 
gar, and  profane.  He  believed  that  they  con- 
tained an  indwelling  element  of  evil  which 
condemned  them  m  its  existence,  and  would 
contaminate  him  by  their  contact. 

Somehow  and  somewhere  in  that  realm  of 
slumber,  the  unreasonableness  and  the  wicked- 
ness of  this  idea  was  flashed  upon  his  con- 
sciousness, and  he  saw  that  evil  did  not  dwell 
in  things,  but  souls! 

(Life  would  be  vastly  easier,  let  me  say  by 
way  of  parenthesis,  if  the  tatters  of  decayed 
and  worn  out  vestments  of  thought  could  fall 
off  quietly  in  our  sleep,  rather  than  be  torn  off 
like  living  flesh  in  our  waking  hours!) 

When  Peter  awoke  (every  enlightenment, 
remember,  is  an  awakening)  he  was  a  differ- 
ent man.  In  that  brief  hour  of  dreams  the 
cherished  convictions  of  a  lifetime  had  van- 
ished like  a  mist.  That  narrow  and  bigoted 
conception  of  the  relations  of  the  profane  and 

32 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

the  sacred  which  had  clung  to  him  even 
through  his  contact  with  the  Christ  fell  away 
like  the  old  skin  of  a  snake  in  the  springtime. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  imagine  a  mental 
revolution  more  bewildering.  He  fell  asleep  a 
sectarian.  He  awoke  a  cosmopolitan.  He  was 
transformed  from  a  bigot  to  a  man  almost  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  Deterioration  of  mind 
is  always  gradual,  but  recovery  usually  sudden. 

To  the  enlightened  and  astonished  Apostle 
a  whole  realm  of  vulgar  places,  persons  and 
things,  were  suddenly  consecrated  and 
shrouded  in  a  halo  of  glory  and  beauty.  God 
had  made  them  holy!  Who  was  he  that  he 
should  call  them  profane? 

His  entire  mental  and  moral  attitude  being 
thus  reversed  toward  these  articles  of  food  and 
clothing,  toward  these  places  and  people,  he 
began  to  regard  them  with  a  new  tenderness 
and  sympathy — as  Francis  de  Assissi  did  the 
birds  and  flowers  after  he  had  embraced  the 
Christ,  calling  them,  "our  little  brothers  the 
birds  and  our  little  sisters  the  flowers." 

This  change  of  mind  and  heart  stands  out 
before  us  to-day,  my  friends,  as  the  permanent 
type  of  that  transformation  through  which  all 
men  everywhere  must  pass,  in  proportion  as  the 
spirit  of  our  Divine  Master  pervades  and  pos- 
sesses them.    In  a  series  of  visions  following 

33 


Hits  and  Misses 

each  other  Hke  the  panels  of  a  panorama,  God 
discloses  to  his  true  children — that  there  is 
something  holy  and  adorable  in  the  heart  of  all 
his  works,  no  matter  how  deep  it  lies  below 
the  surface — ^and  the  rapidity  with  which  we 
make  these  discoveries,  measures  our  growth  in 
at  least  one  of  the  graces  of  Christ ! 

And  we  must  not  for  a  moment  mistake  the 
true  nature  of  this  change !  It  does  not  lie  in 
the  object  beheld,  but  in  the  mind  of  the  be- 
holder ;  not  in  the  thing  seen,  but  the  eye  see- 
ing. The  alteration  is  so  immense  and  start- 
ling at  times,  that  it  seems  to  us  as  if  the  whole 
visible  universe  had  undergone  some  mighty 
transformation.     But  it  is  not  so! 

A  few  days  ago  a  lady  who  was  seated  upon 
her  porch  was  horrified  to  see  an  electric  car 
go  crashing  over  a  careless  little  poodle  dog. 
Torn  almost  to  pieces  but  not  killed,  the 
wretched  victim  crawled  out  from  under  this 
modern  Juggernaut  and  dragged  his  bleeding 
and  trembling  body  to  her  feet.  His  cries,  his 
wounds,  his  mangled  form  excited  in  her  sen- 
sitive nature  an  uncontrollable  feeling  of  loath- 
ing and  disgust.  She  rose  and  fled  into  the 
house;  but  in  a  moment  more  (impelled  by 
that  divine  instinct  of  pity  which  God  has 
planted  so  deeply  in  all  good  women's  hearts), 
she  opened  the  door,  permitted  the  trembling 

34 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

creature  to  enter,  took  him  into  her  hands,  car- 
ried him  to  the  kitchen,  bathed  him,  bound  up  his 
gaping  wounds,  listened  to  his  plaintive  moans, 
permitted  him  to  kiss  her  cheek,  looked  down 
into  the  eyes  in  which  the  fires  of  gratitude 
were  fairly  glowing,  and  finally — pressed  him 
to  her  heart !  She  did  not  see  him  as  he  really 
was,  after  that  uprush  of  love  from  the  sub- 
terranean chambers  of  her  soul !  He  was  still 
a  mangled  and  repulsive  cur ;  but  now  that  she 
saw  him  through  those  other  eyes,  he  had  been 
transformed  and  glorified  tO'  her  vision ! 

Such  was  the  change  that  took  place  in  Peter, 
and  when  he  went  down  to  the  house  of  the  de- 
spised Centurion  (the  hated  Roman  soldier, 
the  uncircumcised  Philistine),  he  saw  him  in 
a  new  and  holy  light.  This  abhorred  man  was 
still  a  Centurion,  a  soldier,  a  Philistine;  but 
he  did  not  seem  so!  What  Peter  now  saw 
was  the  divine  spark  that  burns  in  every  hu- 
man soul — the  essential  elements  of  his  true 
humanity.  He  felt  that  he  was  every  inch  a 
man — and  that  he  was  also  a  son  of  the  living 
God! 

It  is  of  this  phenomenon  in  the  lives  of  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  Christ  that  I  would  speak 
to  you  to-day.  I  wish  to  press  down  upon  your 
hearts  the  truth  that  when  we  see  life  through 
Christ's  eyes — common  places,  seasons,  occupa- 

35 


Hits  and  Misses 

tions,  persons,  seem  to  undergo  this  curious 
and  wonderful  transfiguration. 

But  I  do  not  wish  you  for  a  single  instant 
to  misunderstand  me.  I  am  not  about  to  de- 
clare that  there  is  nothing  evil  in  itself !  This 
insane  delusion  is  too  old  and  too  palpable  to 
entangle  us  in  its  meshes,  let  me  hope !  There 
are  thoughts  of  the  human  mind  and  states  of 
the  human  soul,  and  deeds  of  the  human  hand, 
and  words  of  the  human  lips,  and  glances  of 
the  human  eye,  that  cannot  be  made  holy  by  our 
thinking  them  to  be  so !  There  are  fixed  limi- 
tations to  the  principle  ^'Honi  soit  qui  mat  y 
penseT  There  are  some  things  which  can  no 
more  be  made  good  by  thinking,  than  clay  can 
be  made  soft  by  roasting!  Covetousness, 
worldliness,  hypocrisy,  drunkenness,  adultery, 
cannot  be  sanctified  by  thought,  any  more  than 
the  Devil  can  be  by  holy  water ! 

No  power  in  the  universe  can  alter  its  com- 
plexion, or  consecrate — a  lie !  If  all  the  angels 
in  heaven  should  combine  to  manipulate  it 
through  some  splendid  ritual,  and  by  the  im- 
position of  their  holv  hands  or  the  total  im- 
mersion of  it  in  the  waters  of  some  sacred  river 
attempt  to  turn  it  into  a  truth,  they  could  not 
succeed !  It  would  still  remain  a  lie,  and  hiss 
like  a  coal  from  the  fires  of  hell  when  it  touched 
the  sacred  stream !     And  what  the  angels  can- 

36 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

not  do,  we  had  better  not  attempt !  When  men 
organize  their  business  and  when  women  con- 
stitute their  societies  in  the  hope  that  splendid 
buildings  and  gracious  manners  and  elegant 
customs  will  make  impurity  clean,  and  vice  vir- 
tuous, and  falsehoods  truthful,  they  are  not 
only  doomed  to  ignominious  failure,  but  to 
some  form  of  damnation  that  will  disclose  to 
them  at  last  the  real  nature  of  unrighteousness. 

Christian  philosophy  does  not  veil  the  ele- 
ment of  evil.  Christian  charity  does  not  dis- 
guise the  true  nature  of  sin.  It  extends  allow- 
ance to  men,  but  not  to  falsehoods  and  crimes 
themselves.  "It  does  not  look  with  equal  com- 
placency upon  all  men  and  things,  and  with  a 
sort  of  animal  sympathy  lick  every  sore  of 
humanity  that  lies  at  its  gate  !'* 

You  see  that  I  do  wo ^  mean  that  a  man  can 
change  a  thing  which  is  evil  into  one  that  is 
good,  by  changing  its  name  or  changing  his 
thought  about  it — and  now  it  is  time  to  tell 
you  more  clearly  what  I  do  mean. 

The  thing  I  mean  is  this — that  in  a  thousand 
and  one  things  and  places  and  times  and  occu- 
pations and  people  which  seem  to  us  vulgar, 
common  and  unclean,  there  is  something 
divinely  beautiful,  and  that  when  our  eyes  are 
opened  we  shall  see  it  as  Peter  did,  in  the  food 


37 


Hits  and  Misses 

which  he  had  abhorred  and  the  people  he  had 
despised. 

Let  us  take  these  objects  up  and  see  if  be- 
neath that  thin  veneer  which  lies  roughly  upon 
their  surface,  there  is  not  to  be  found  this  un- 
derlying beauty. 

Take  common  places  first. 

Those  who  live  in  localities  which  have  never 
been  made  famous  by  great  and  glorious  deeds 
and  lives,  are  all  but  oblivious  to  anything  di- 
vine about  them ;  but  wonderful  as  it  is  that 
we  can  be  so  blind,  it  is  a  still  more  startling 
fact  that  those  who  live  by  the  very  tombs  of 
the  prophets  become  gradually  insensible  to 
that  very  element  which  attracts  and  fascinates 
the  pilgrim !  It  is  only  distance  that  lends  en- 
chantment to  our  view !  A  place  to  be  sacred 
must  be  remote,  and  to  be  near  is  synonymous 
with  being  vulgar.  It  is  only  in  some  far  away 
Palestine  that  God's  glory  has  been  revealed 
(we  think),  and  we  flatter  ourselves  that  if 
we  were  there,  that  glory  would  flash  resist- 
lessly  and  ceaselessly  upon  our  view. 

It  is  a  fatal  heresy!  The  sacred  presence 
does  not  abide  in  closets  dedicated  to  prayer 
and  temples  set  apart  for  worship  alone. 

The  nursery  where  we  soothe  a  child  to 
sleep,  the  kitchen,  the  blacksmith  shop,  the 
side  hill  farm,  the  dingy,  dirty  mill,  the  crowded 

38 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

store,  the  old  familiar  street,  are  all  instinct 
with  it,  and  if  you  do  not  see  it  there,  you 
could  not  see  it^otherwhere !  You  who  cannot 
hear  God's  stately  steppings  in  the  thunder  of 
traffic  in  the  street,  and  in  the  dull  rumble  of 
the  cars  along  the  iron  rails,  would  not  have 
heard  them  in  the  footfalls  of  Jesus  Christ 
along  the  shores  of  Galilee,  for  it  is  not  in  the 
sound,  but  in  the  ear,  that  sacredness  exists ! 
There  is  no  spot  on  earth  so  plain,  so  dull,  but 
it  is  drenched  with  this  dew  of  sacredness. 
Every  foot  of  earth  is  consecrated  ground. 
The  Son  of  Man  would  have  felt  the  thrill  of 
the  divine  presence  on  an  Arabian  desert  as 
palpably  as  on  the  Milky  Way!  Every  shrub 
is  a  flaming  bush,  every  river  a  Jordan,  every 
little  quiet  nook  where  flowers  grow  and 
grasses  rustle  in  the  breeze,  a  garden  of  Geth- 
semane  to  him  whose  soul  has  passed  through 
the  change  that  came  to  Peter.  The  most  of 
us  require  an  orchestra  of  sixty  pieces  to 
awaken  our  musical  sensibilities ;  but  hand  a 
printed  score  to  men  like  Seidl  and  Thomas, 
and  those  black  (and  to  us  illegible)  ink  marks 
will  stir  them  to  raptures  and  to  tears ! 

There  is  no  common  place ! 

Take  common  times! 

How  tame,  how  dull,  how  uneventful  is  the 
age  in  which  we  live!     If  this  even  tenor  is 

39 


Hits  and  Misses 

disturbed  by  something  startling,  we  soon  elim- 
inate that  unfamiliar  element  and  reduce  it 
all  to  the  old  dead  level  of  monotony.  And 
however  strange  it  seems,  we  scarcely  dream 
it  may  be  sacred !  That  element  exists  for  us 
in  other  ages  only.  We  put  the  golden  age 
back  into  the  past  and  the  millennium  forward 
into  the  future.  The  present  is  stupid,  dull, 
profane.  It  never  occurs  to  us  that  at  any 
common  hour  of  any  common  day,  there  might 
come  to  open  eyes  and  ears  disclosures  of 
the  divine  presence  that  always  haunts  these 
scenes !  We  think  that  they  belong  to  the  eras 
of  the  prophets,  sages,  seers  and  apostles — in 
the  dim  and  distant  past. 

We  ought  to  understand,  that  the  man  who 
does  not  perceive  the  sacredness  of  life  and 
the  divinity  of  being  in  this  noisy  nineteenth 
century  could  not  by  any  possibility  have  seen 
it  in  the  first !  This  was  the  truth  that  Ruskin 
spent  his  life  in  driving  home.  "If,"  said  he, 
"we  are  to  do  anything  great,  good,  awful,  re- 
ligious, it  must  be  got  out  of  our  own  little 
island  and  out  of  this  year  1846 — railroads  and 
all!  If  a  British  painter  (I  say  this  in  earnest 
seriousness)  cannot  make  historical  characters 
out  of  the  House  of  Peers,  he  cannot  paint  his- 
tory, and  if  he  cannot  make  a  Madonna  out  of 


40 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

a  British  girl  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  he 
cannot  paint  them  at  all." 

Nor  will  the  man  who  does  not  perceive  this 
indwelling  glory  in  every  one  of  the  six  secular 
days  of  the  week  perceive  it  on  the  Holy  Sab- 
bath. It  is  not  the  stillness  in  the  village 
street,  but  the  stillness  in  the  schoolboy's  soul 
that  gives  that  holy  calm  to  the  world  on  every 
Sabbath  day.  A  sacred  day!  A  holy  day! 
What  day,  what  hour,  what  moment  is  not 
sacred  ?  What  one  not  fitted  for  a  revelation  ? 
Is  it  that  solemn  period  when  the  sun  goes 
forth  like  a  bridegroom  from  his  chamber; 
when  it  hangs  like  the  eye  of  God  above  the 
world  at  noon ;  when  the  curtain  falls  at  dewy 
eve  and  ushers  in  the  solemn  hush  that  ushers 
in  the  solemn  night;  when  the  imperishable 
stars  look  down  from  the  vast  depths  of  the 
infinite  and  whisper  their  incommunicable 
secrets  ? 

There  are  no  common  times ! 

Take  common  occupations. 

We  call  them  common,  but  they  are  not,  for 
every  one  that  is  honest,  received  its  consecra- 
tion on  that  morning  when  God  sent  man  forth 
to  earn  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow! 
We  speak  of  secular  callings !  But  there  are 
none.  The  men  who  think  them  so,  and  yearn 
for  that  mental  elevation  which  they  dream  of 

41 


Hits  and  Misses 

as  inhering  by  some  thaumaturgical  efficacy  in 
"the  sacred  calHngs,"  are  deluded. 

''If  I  could  only  dwell  among  my  books  all 
through  the  week  and  on  the  Sabbath  stand  in 
the  sacred  desk  and  propound  the  results  of 
my  study  to  eager  listeners ;  if  I  could  baptize 
little  children,  marry  young  lovers,  distribute 
the  communion  bread  and  wine,  kneel  down  by 
the  side  of  the  dying,  speak  words  of  consola- 
tion to  the  sorrowing;  then,  then,  I  could  feel 
the  thrill  of  the  sacredness  of  life !"  you  say, 
but  are  mistaken. 

You  would  not  feel  the  sacredness  of  my 
life,  for  example,  if  you  do  not  of  your  own! 
There  is  nothing  in  the  calling  itself  of  the 
minister  or  priest  to  infuse  these  feelings 
into  your  soul.  No  one  in  all  the  world  has 
ever  regarded  life  as  being  so  utterly  and 
nauseatingly  empty  as  those  who  in  weary  and 
soulless  moments  have  discharged  these  sacred 
functions !  There  come  times  to  every  minis- 
ter, priest,  prophet,  apostle  when  every  word 
he  utters  rings  hollowly,  like  sounding  brass 
or  tinkling  cymbal,  when  his  most  solemn 
deeds  are  perfunctory  and  dead,  when  God  is 
farther  away  than  the  polar  star!  Many  a 
time,  believe  me,  Jehovah  seemed  nearer  to 
some  humble  w^orshipper  that  had  brought  to 
the  altar  a  turtle  dove  and  two  young  pigeons  in 

42 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

some  moment  of  aspiration  or  self-surrender, 
than  to  the  poor  High  Priest  who  carried  into 
the  Holy  of  Holies  an  empty,  a  broken,  or  a 
sinful  heart ! 

And  the  same  sad  truth  sounds  home  in  the 
heart  of  the  poor  drudge  who  digs  in  the  sewer 
and  dreams  that  if  he  could  sit  in  the  banker's 
chair  or  stand  at  the  table  of  the  scientist,  he 
could  perceive  a  sacredness  in  life  which  hides 
itself  in  the  damp  vapors  which  he  breathes. 
His  thought  is  false  to  history,  to  reason,  to 
experience!  Moses  was  feeding  his  flocks 
when  he  saw  the  burning  bush.  Saul  was  seek- 
ing his  father's  asses  when  the  prophetic 
afflatus  seized  him.  David  was  a  fugitive, 
Amos  a  herdsman,  Paul  a  tentmaker,  and  the 
Christ  a  carpenter.  And  yet  through  these 
dreary  tasks,  as  through  a  lens  of  mighty 
power  and  crystal  clearness,  they  beheld  that 
halo  of  glory  which  hangs  eternally  over  life. 

There  are  no  common  occupations. 

Take  common  people! 

We  pass  our  lives,  perhaps,  among  the  poor, 
the  ignorant,  the  depraved.  Their  low  brows, 
their  vulgar  talk,  their  uncouth  manners  re- 
pel and  offend  us !  They  utter  no  senti- 
ments that  give  us  elevated  thoughts,  they 
do  no  deeds  that  make  us  long  to  be  heroes. 
We  experience  a  disgust  and  loathing  in  their 

43 


Hits  and  Misses 

presence.  We  learn  to  despise  our  common 
humanity.  If  we  could  only  associate  with 
poets,  with  judges,  with  scientists,  with  women 
of  culture  and  men  of  learning,  we  flatter  our- 
selves that  we  should  not  only  catch  glimpses, 
but  have  visions  of  that  divinity  that  dwells  in 
man. 

We  are  mistaken !  If  we  do  not  discover  it 
in  roustabouts  and  draymen,  we  would  not  in 
savants  and  sages !  Who  do  you  think  cher- 
ished the  loftiest  conceptions  of  human  nature, 
Herod  or  John  the  Baptist,  Dives  or  Lazarus, 
Pilate  or  Jesus  Christ?  The  kings  dwelt 
among  those  who  wore  purple  and  fine  linen, 
and  who  fared  sumptuously  every  day,  who 
read  books,  fought  battles,  governed  states ; 
and  the  prophets  associated  with  taxgatherers, 
fishermen,  publicans,  carpenters,  criminals,  and 
demoniacs,  and  yet  they  were  the  ones  who  saw 
the  divine  in  the  human. 

To  the  first,  men  were  dogs ;  to  the  second, 
the  children  of  the  living  God !  "All  men  are 
liars,"  said  Solomon  from  his  throne,  about 
princes  and  potentates.  *'Ye  are  my  friends !" 
exclaimed  a  greater  than  Solomon  from  his 
couch  by  a  low  table  in  an  upper  room,  about 
publicans  and  sinners. 

The  "common  people" !  Odious  distinction ! 
There  are  no  common  people.     The  degrada- 

44 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

tion  is  in  the  eye  of  the  beholder !  CorneHus 
is  one  man  to  the  soul  of  Peter  the  bigot  at 
noon,  and  quite  another  to  Peter  the  Christian 
at  dusk. 

My  friends,  how  is  it  with  youf  Is  the  sa- 
credness  of  life  eluding  you,  or,  rather,  are  you 
overlooking  itf  Is  that  holy  something  which 
inheres  in  all  places,  times,  occupations,  and 
people,  invisible  to  you  through  your  igno- 
rance, pre j  udice  and  sin  ?  Could  I  ask  any  bet- 
ter gift  for  you  than  that  your  eyes  should  be 
opened  to  all  this  grandeur,  all  this  glory?  Is 
it  too  much  to  say,  *'the  multitudes  are  blind?" 
How  tew  are  quick  and  keen  to  those  tender, 
sacred  elements  which  lie  in  every  trivial  inci- 
dent of  life  or  object  of  the  universe ! 

A  few  days  ago  a  pale  little  lad,  who  was 
making  a  long  and  lonesome  journey  in  a  rail- 
road train,  was  noticed  by  a  fellow  traveler 
to  be  gazing  wistfully  toward  a  seat  where  a 
mother  and  a  brood  of  children  were  merrily 
eating  their  lunch.  The  tears  gathered  in  his 
eyes,  though  he  bravely  tried  to  suppress  them, 
and  all  unconsciously  he  heaved  a  sigh. 

"Are  you  hungry,  my  little  man?"  said  the 
observant  traveler. 

*'No,  sir,  I  have  a  lunch  of  my  own,"  he 
answered  heavily. 


45 


Hits  and  Misses 

''What  is  the  matter  then  ?  Tell  me  and  per- 
haps I  can  help  you." 

"I  am  so  lonely,  and  they  seem  so  happy  over 
there,  and  then  they've  got — they've  got  their 
mother." 

"And  you  have  lost  yours  ?" 

''Yes,  sir,  and  I  am  going  to  an  uncle's  whom 
I  have  never  seen." 

"How  are  you  finding  your  way  to  him 
alone?" 

"A  kind  lady,  who  paid  my  fare,  tied  this 
card  around  my  neck.  You  may  read  it  if 
you  wish." 

The  stranger  did  so,  and  these  were  the 
solemn  and  beautiful  words :  "And  whosoever 
shall  give  to  drink  unto  one  of  these  little  ones 
a  cup  of  cold  water  only,  in  the  name  of  a  dis- 
ciple, verily  I  say  unto  you  he  shall  in  no  wise 
lose  his  reward." 

He  turned  away  to  hide  a  tear,  stepped 
across  the  aisle  and  whispered  a  few  words  to 
the  mother  of  the  children. 

She  listened  eagerly,  rose  impulsively  from 
her  seat,  hurried  toward  the  little  orphan,  and 
in  a  moment  had  folded  him  to  her  heart  and 
was  sobbing  over  him  and  murmuring  broken 
words  of  love  and  tenderness. 

Now  mark  you,  there  was  only  one  man  in 
the  whole  car  who  penetrated    into    the    holy 

46 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

secrets  of  the  grief  of  this  httle  waif.  To  all 
the  rest  of  those  absorbed  or  stupid  people  this 
deep  and  tender  drama  was  passing  unob- 
served. It  escaped  the  eye  of  even  this  mother. 
And  yet  tragedies  are  transpiring  all  around 
us,  in  which  lie  the  revelations  of  the  deep  and 
holy  elements  of  our  common  human  nature. 
We  need  the  seeing  eye,  the  hearing  ear,  the 
feeling  heart.  Do  you  not  often  catch  brief 
and  fugitive  glimpses  of  this  hidden  sacredness 
in  the  faces  of  men,  in  the  occupations  of  life, 
in  the  common  scenes  and  places?  I  do.  1 
stood  the  other  day  in  Burnet  Woods  and 
gazed  at  the  summit  of  a  hill  along  which  stood 
a  sentinel  line  of  birches,  the  brown  leaves  still 
clinging  scantily  to  their  bared  limbs  in  shreds 
and  patches  like  the  worn  garments  of  half 
naked  beggars.  I  had  looked  long  at  them 
in  one  of  those  fits  of  abstraction  in  which  the 
soul  seems  unconsciously  to  be  yearning  for 
and  searching  after  the  secrets  of  the  universe, 
and  after  that  spiritual  beauty  which  lurks  in 
every  landscape,  when  suddenly  it  flashed  upon 
me  for  an  instant  and  was  gone.  I  cannot 
describe  it.  I  could  not  recall  it.  It  had  van- 
ished utterly;  but  I  know  that  I  had  seen  it! 
My  heart  bounded,  my  bosom  heaved,  my  eyes 
filled  with  tears.  I  had  touched  in  some  way 
the  hem  of  the  garment  of  the  Divine  Spirit  of 

47 


Hits  and  Misses 

life.  It  was  a  mystery,  but  it  was  a  reality, 
and  I  have  perceived  it  often  in  places  and 
times,  and  occupations,  and  people,  but  it  flits 
as  quickly  as  it  appears. 

What  I  long  for  is  the  capacity  to  retain  the 
vision.  For  the  power  to  make  the  evanescent 
glimpse  abide,  to  see  at  all  times  and  in  all 
places  that  sacred  holy  something  which  makes 
us  feel  that  we  are  always  in  the  presence  of 
the  Divine — this  is  the  greatest  gift  or  acquisi- 
tion of  life. 

To  him  whose  spirit  possesses  this  power, 
each  place  on  which  he  stands  is  holy  ground, 
each  hour  through  which  he  moves  is  holy 
time,  each  task  which  he  performs  is  holy  toil, 
each  human  form  he  sees,  a  temple  of  the  living 
God. 

If  this  is  alien  to  your  thought,  my  friend, 
if  it  sounds  unreal,  if  it  awakens  incredulity,  it 
proves  that  your  soul  is  still  asleep.  And  if 
you  desire  to  see  more  than  you  now  see,  and 
feel  more  than  you  now  feel  of  this  indwelling 
sacredness  of  life  and  being,  look  through  the 
eyes  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  the  great  Seer! 
The  interior  natures  of  all  things  were  open 
to  his  penetrating  gaze. 

Suppose  that  in  walking  through  the  Louvre 
or  Vatican  you  should  come  upon  John  Ruskin, 
or  Burne  Jones,  or  Millet,  would  you  not  ex- 

48 


The  Most  Common  is  the  Most  Sacred 

pect  them  to  point  you  out  a  thousand  hidden 
beauties  on  those  walls? 

Suppose  that  with  untrained  eyes  you  were 
walking  in  a  quarry  or  a  canon  and  should  meet 
Hugh  Miller  or  Agassiz.  Do  you  not  realize 
that  through  their  eyes  would  come  to  you 
revelations  of  the  hidden  teachings  and  secrets 
of  those  rocks  that  would  widen  your  horizon 
and  extend  your  vision  indefinitely? 

Well,  a  greater  than  these  is  here!  To  his 
clarified  vision  the  inner  splendors  were  all  re- 
vealed. There  was  nothing  common  in  his 
sight.  The  rippling  lakes,  the  running  brooks, 
the  sower  casting  his  seed,  the  bird  singing  his 
matin  song,  the  flower  blooming  in  hidden 
dells,  the  mother  nursing  her  child,  the  widow 
lamenting  her  son,  the  fisherman  casting  his 
net — in  all  and  each,  there  was  that  supernal 
loveliness  one  glimpse  of  which  transfigures  us 
with  joy. 

Look  through  those  eyes ! 


49 


Laying  a  Modern  Specter 


"The  reward  of  one  duty  is  the  power  to  fulfil 
another." 

— George  Eliot. 

"Man  is  only  what  he  becomes — profound  truth; 
but  he  becomes  only  what  he  is — truth  still  more  pro- 
found." 

— Amiel. 

"Make  what  contortions  a  man  will,  he  can  only 
bring  to  light  his  own  individuality." 

— Goethe. 

"While  the  multitude  imagines  itself  to  live  by  its 
false  science,  it  does  really  live  by  its  true  religion." 

— Matthew  Arnold. 

"The  great  function  of  environment  is  not  to  mod- 
ify; but  to  sustain.  .  .  .  In  the  organism  lies  the  prin- 
ciple of  life." 

— Drummond. 


That  ye  may  he  blameless  and  harmless,  the 
sons  of  God  zvithout  rebuke  in  the  midst  of  a 
crooked  and  perverse  nation,  among  whom 
ye  shine  as  lights  in  the  world. — Phil,  ii,  75. 

We  can  put  the  whole  thought  of  this  text 
in  a  brief  paraphrase. 

"My  friends,  you  are  in  circumstances  most 
unfavorable  to  the  divine  life.  Nevertheless, 
I  bid  you  attain  it.  Be  greater  than  the  influ- 
ences which  surround  you.  The  tide  sets  away 
from  Christ  and  holiness.  No  matter!  Stem 
the  current !  Everywhere  the  minds  of  men 
are  full  of  darkness.  Well,  all  the  same,  let 
yours  be  light.  Other  men  are  bad — be  thou 
good!" 

If  St.  Paul  were  speaking  to  a  modern  audi- 
ence, he  would  seize  upon  the  word  environ- 
ment. He  would  say,  ''Your  environment  is 
indeed  unfavorable;  but  you  must  be  superior 
to  it." 

This  stern  imperative  of  the  great  apostle 
raises  the  old,  old  question.  Can  a  man  be 
superior  to  his  environment,  or  is  he  really  its 
victim  ? 

53 


Hits  and  Misses 

It  is  a  question  which  no  age  can  settle  for 
the  next,  and  no  man  settle  for  another.  It  is 
as  fresh,  terrible,  and  important  for  you  and 
for  me  as  if  no  one  else  had  ever  grappled 
with  it. 

Let  us  take  it  up  once  more. 

Modern  science  has  summoned  from  the 
"vasty  deep"  of  thought  two  age-old  spirits 
to  which  she  has  given  the  names  of  Heredity 
and  Environment.  These  twin  genii  have 
wrapped  their  sinuous  folds  around  men  as  the 
serpents  did  theirs  around  Laocoon  and  his 
sons.  They  have  choked  more  aspirations  and 
stifled  more  hopes  than  all  the  other  foes  which 
have  attacked  human  happiness  in  the  age  in 
which  we  live.  Everywhere  men  are  excusing 
their  weaknesses  and  failures  by  saying  to 
themselves,  "I  have  been  born  with  inherited 
defects  which  I  can  no  more  overcome  than  I 
can  change  the  color  of  my  hair,"  or,  "I  am 
surrounded  by  influences  which  shape  me  in 
the  same  resistless  way  as  climate  does  the  form 
and  color  of  flora  or  fauna." 

Now,  all  knowledge  must  be  classified  before 
it  can  be  useful,  and  ideas  themselves  must  sub- 
mit to  be  catalogued.  Fear  of  them  often  van- 
ishes when  they  are  discovered  to  be  old  foes  in 
other  feathers. 

It  is  somewhere  recorded  that  a  mischievous 

54 


Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

medical  student  once  beguiled  a  little  newsboy 
into  a  doctor's  office  under  pretense  of  wishing 
to  buy  a  morning  paper.  While  the  young 
merchant  stood  gazing  about  the  room,  the 
young  scholar  touched  a  secret  spring.  A  door 
flew  open  in  the  wall,  and  a  human  skeleton 
appeared.  With  a  wild  whoop  of  terror  the 
child  rushed  out  into  the  street,  and  reassured 
by  sunlight  and  open  space,  stood  cursing  the 
building  and  its  occupants.  The  commotion 
and  the  profanity  aroused  the  old  doctor. 
Emaciated  and  wan  with  a  long  life  of  cease- 
less toil,  he  rushed  to  the  door  and  fiercely 
rebuked  the  profane  swearer. 

"You  can't  fool  me,  even  if  you  have  got 
your  clothes  on,"  shrieked  the  boy,  and  ran. 

Well,  Heredity  and  Environment  have  got 
on  other  clothes;  but  beneath  this  surface 
change  you  may  recognize  the  Fate  and  Des- 
tiny of  Antiquity;  and  for  one  I  propose  to 
stand  my  ground  and  face  them !  Let  us  divide 
and  conquer!  We  will  take  environment 
to-day. 

Is  environment  stronger  than  man,  or  can 
a  man  really  be  blameless  in  the  midst  of  evil 
surroundings?  Can  he  illuminate  the  moral 
darkness  around  him,  or  will  it  eventually  ex- 
tinguish his  light? 

I  should  not  be  here  to-day  if  I  did  not  be- 

55 


Hits  and  Misses 

lieve  in  the  superiority  of  the  soul  to  all  its 
foes ;  and  yet  a  man  who  did  not  comprehend, 
or  who  should  disparage  the  fearful  power  of 
environment  upon  all  forms  of  life,  would  not 
deserve  and  could  not  gain  your  confidence. 
Modern  science  has  given  us  too  many  clear 
and  convincing  proofs  of  its  colossal  power,  to 
permit  us  to  doubt. 

Schwankewitsch,  a  Russian  scientist,  having 
found  that  a  certain  Phyllopod  Crustacean  oc- 
curring in  the  salt  vats  of  Southern  Russia, 
when  the  brine  was  weakened,  was  trans- 
formed into  a  distinct  species,  began  to  freshen 
the  water  gradually.  The  change  grew  more 
and  more  marked,  until  after  several  genera- 
tions (not  of  thirty-three  years;  but  of  some 
thirty-three  hours),  the  antennas  had  been  so 
altered  in  form,  a  joint  so  completely  lost  from 
the  abdomen,  and  other  changes  so  great  pro- 
duced, that  it  had  not  only  passed  from  one 
species  to  another,  but  into  an  absolutely  differ- 
ent genus ! 

And  this  is  only  a  single  illustration  from  a 
single  realm  of  being,  of  that  terrific  force  with 
which  environment  is  continually  altering  the 
forms  of  flowers,  trees,  fishes,  birds,  animals, 
and  every  living  thing. 

Having  seen  this  marvelous  and  universal 
process  so  thoroughly  revealed,  it  is  no  wonder 

56 


Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

that  we  "frail  children  of  dust,  and  feeble  as 
frail,"  should  at  last  look  up  to  the  stars  and 
out  upon  the  sea,  and  contemplate  a  climate 
which  we  cannot  change,  and  a  geography 
which  we  cannot  alter,  and  forces  which  grind 
over  us  like  those  of  glaciers  and  tides ;  and  feel 
that  we,  too,  are  as  helpless  as  the  Phyllopod 
Crustaceans,  and  that  whenever  some  gigantic 
hand  freshens  the  water  or  salts  it,  our  antenna 
will  be  changed,  and  we  shall  be  shifted  from 
species  to  species  and  genus  to  genus. 

Such  a  fear  is  natural.  It  is  founded  upon 
facts  too  palpable  to  be  denied.  Environment 
is  a  stupendous  power.  Let  it  be  altered  a 
little,  and  we  shall  be  changed  somewhat.  Let 
it  be  altered  completely,  and  we  shall  be 
changed  altogether,  or  perhaps  disappear  en- 
tirely. 

But  the  consciouness  of  this  truth  has  be- 
come too  intense.  It  has  assumed  exaggerated 
proportions  and  importance.  In  reflecting 
upon  the  power  of  environment,  we  have  for- 
gotten the  power  of  soul  I 

In  reality,  there  are  two  forces  which  inter- 
act upon  each  other,  and  you  cannot  compre- 
hend the  problem  without  understanding  the 
values  of  x  and  y  both.  If  x  is  environment 
and  y  soul,  then  let  it  be  remembered  that  not 
only  does  x  act  upon  y,  but  3;  acts  upon  xl 

57 


Hits  and  Misses 

I  bid  you  then  remember  that  the  soul  is  a 
force !  And  it  now  becomes  our  duty  to  study 
by  the  strictest  methods  of  inductive  science  the 
power  of  the  soul  to  affect  environment.  Our 
investigation  will  be  nothing  but  a  review,  and 
may  be  compressed  into  a  single  sentence. 
Soul,  spirit,  mentality,  man  (whatever  be  the 
name  you  call  it  by)  has  leveled  mountains, 
drained  marshes,  split  continents  with  canals, 
turned  deserts  into  gardens,  and  gardens  to 
deserts,  denuded  vast  plateaus  of  their  forests, 
shifted  the  beds  of  rivers,  diminished  or  in- 
creased rainfalls,  and  transformed  climates 
that  were  as  hot  as  furnaces  to  those  that  were 
cool,  and  sweet,  and  tolerable. 

In  short,  the  little  Phyllopod  in  the  tank  has 
dictated  the  movements  of  the  mighty  hand 
that  opened  the  sluiceway!  'It  is  too  fresh! 
It  is  too  salt !  I  will  not  have  it,"  he  cries,  and 
the  gates  rise  or  fall  at  his  bidding.  And  now 
I  say,  that  if  human  pride  needs  to  be  humili- 
ated by  the  consciousness  that  it  is  subject  to 
higher  powers,  human  terror  needs  to  be 
allayed  by  remembering  that  many  of  these 
higher  powers  are  subject  to  human  will. 

There  are  multitudes  of  individual  units  in 
every  community  who  need  to  be  told  plainly 
and  confidently  that  the  environment  before 
which  they  tremble  is  a  bugaboo,  and  that  they 

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Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

must  arise  in  the  power  of  their  free  might  to 
alter  and  to  conquer  it. 

I  submit  to  the  consideration  of  such  people 
the  three  following  propositions  : 

Man's  power  to  alter  his  environment  is  pro- 
portioned 

I.  To  the  fullness  of  his  self-consciousness. 

II.  To  the  fullness  of  his  self-confidence. 

III.  To  the  fullness  of  his  self-consecration. 
I.  We  are  in  the  first  place  then  to  show  that 

man's  power  to  alter  his  environment  is  pro- 
portioned to  his  self-consciousness,  and  at  the 
very  outset,  discover  that  only  a  small  propor- 
tion of  us  ever  attain  to  any  considerable  degree 
of  that  knowledge  of  ourselves  which  possesses 
this  potency. 

Little  children,  for  example,  have  no  self- 
consciousness  at  all.  They  have  not  the  remot- 
est conception  that  there  is  any  distinction  at 
all  between  themselves  and  the  rest  of  the 
world.  They  know  nothing  whatever  of  an 
ego  which  is  different  from  their  environment. 
A  rag  doll  knows  as  much  difference  between 
itself  and  its  little  two-year-old  mistress  as  she 
does  between  herself  and  her  mother!  The 
nursing  infant  never  in  its  thought  separated 
itself  from  its  mother's  bosom,  even  when  in 
act  it  did  detach  itself.  Its  entire  relation  to 
the  outside  world  or  its  environment  is  gov- 

59 


Hits  and  Misses 

erned  by  a  few  primal  instincts,  and  not  by  any 
self-conscious  effort. 

Of  course  it  is  victimized !  Fires  burn  it, 
doors  pinch  it,  cats  scratch  it,  dogs  bite  it. 
But  slowly,  painfully,  certainly,  this  helpless 
creature  does  begin  to  detach  itself  in  thought 
from  its  mother's  breast,  its  father's  hand,  and 
all  the  multitudinous  objects  in  the  not  me 
world.  And  just  in  proportion  as  it  comes  to 
know  the  ego  as  distinct  from  the  non-ego,  be- 
comes acquainted  with  its  powers,  and  realizes 
its  capacities,  it  begins  to  act  back  on  that  by 
which  it  is  acted  upon.  It  strikes,  it  bites,  it 
pinches,  it  kicks ;  and  its  environment  begins  to 
dodge !  It  is  because  the  savage  is  an  uncon- 
scious child  that  he  has  affected  his  environ- 
ment so  little.  He  has  not  in  thought  differ- 
entiated himself  from  his  environment  enough 
to  react  upon  it  profoundly.  In  a  sense  he  is 
like  the  horse,  the  lion,  or  the  ass.  He  moves 
amidst  the  forces  and  elements  of  his  habitat, 
animated  by  a  few  primal  instincts,  and  while 
struggling  blindly  against  the  most  palpable  of 
his  foes,  goes  down  a  victim  to  those  which  are 
too  subtle  and  elusive  for  his  discovery.  Of 
course  he  is  their  victim ! 

But  with  races  as  with  men,  power  begins 
with  self-discovery.  "Gnothi  seauton"  is  the 
trumpet  call  to  victory.     Whenever  masses  of 

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Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

men  have  differentiated  themselves  from  the 
outside  world,  and  turned  their  powers  of  an- 
alysis and  comprehension  upon  their  own  souls, 
its  marvelous  capacities  have  been  revealed.  It 
is  like  a  boy's  discovery  that  a  knife  will  cut. 
They  try  the  edge  of  this  invincible  weapon, 
the  soul,  upon  every  object  within  reach.  In- 
stantly the  foes  of  its  welfare  begin  to  go  down 
before  it,  and  vanish  in  proportion  as  that  self- 
consciousness  becomes  acute  and  clear. 

Do  you  know  yourself f  Have  you  ever 
clearly  and  fully  ascertained  the  indestructibil- 
ity of  your  soul,  its  complex  powers,  its  sub- 
lime capacities  ?  Have  you  ever  tested  it  to  its 
utmost  capacity,  and  found  that  nothing  could 
conquer  it  ?  In  no  respect  do  you  differ  more 
from  the  mighty  spirits  who  have  defied  the 
embattled  hosts  of  poverty,  sickness,  misunder- 
standing, injustice,  and  misfortune  than  in  not 
putting  your  soul  to  its  full  proof ! 

II.  In  the  second  place  man's  power  to  alter 
and  to  triumph  over  his  environment  is  pro- 
portioned to  his  self-confidence.  Self-confi-  i^\^ 
dence  in  its  highest  and  truest  form  is  me  ^^^  ^.^7*  >... 
product  of  self-consciousness.  It  is  only  when 
a  man  has  put  his  soul  to  the  proof,  as  a  soldier 
does  a  sword  and  a  sailor  does  his  ship,  that  he 
learns  at  length  to  trust  it  utterly.  Men  like 
Joshua,  Daniel,  Paul,  Savonarola,  John  Knox, 

6i 


Hits  and  Misses 

and  Chinese  Gordon,  have  possessed  a  con- 
fidence in  their  soul's  abiUty  to  endure  and 
triumph,  that  nothing  could  upset.  As  David 
trusted  his  sling,  Robin  Hood  his  bow,  Caesar 
his  Praetorian  Guard,  and  Napoleon  his  star, 
they  trusted  in  the  invincibility  and  the  inviola- 
bility of  that  ethereal  essence  which  we  call  the 
soul.  They  felt  that  it  could  find  its  way  out 
of  any  labyrinth,  it  could  meet  any  emergen- 
cies, it  could  surmount  all  obstacles.  Fire 
could  not  burn  it,  water  could  not  drown  it, 
death  could  not  conquer  it.  Such  was  the  con- 
fidence of  Wyckliffe  when  he  saw  men  kindle 
the  fagots  with  their  torches.  Such  was  the 
confidence  of  Socrates  when  the  jailer  gave 
him  the  hemlock. 

''In  what  way  will  you  have  us  bury  you?" 
said  Crito.  "In  any  way  you  like;  only  you 
must  get  hold  of  me  and  be  sure  I  do  not  walk 
away  from  you,"  he  answered,  with  a  calm, 
expectant  smile.  This  faith  that  nothing  can 
conquer  the  soul  arouses  a  sublime  confidence 
that  the  soul  can  conquer  anything.  "I  am 
bigger  than  anything  that  can  happen  to  me," 
said  the  hero  of  a  Western  story. 

Get  this  confidence,  and  mountains  will  crum- 
ble at  your  touch.  What  were  Alps  to  men 
like  Hannibal  and  Napoleon?  What  was  an 
ocean  to  a  man  like  Columbus?    There  is  an 

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Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

energy  in  a  human  will  which  has  never  been 
exhausted  nor  measured.  You  can  measure 
steam  by  norse  power,  and  electricity  by 
volts ;  but  where  is  your  unit  by  which  to  test 
what  Alexander,  Sherman  or  Dewey  will  do, 
when  you  put  them  in  a  pinch  ? 

Do  you  believe  this?  Do  you  possess  this 
sublime  confidence  in  that  vital  spark  of  inex- 
tinguishable flame  which  burns  in  your  bosom  ? 

III.  In  the  third  place,  man's  power  to  alter 
and  triumph  over  his  environment  is  propor- 
tioned to  his  self-consecration.  By  self-conse- 
cration I  mean  the  dedication  of  the  soul  to 
victory  over  all  the  foes  that  threaten  its  wel- 
fare. If  self-knowledge  is  rare,  and  self-con- 
fidence rarer,  self-consecration  is  rarest.  How 
few  men  do  we  meet  who  have  risen  to  this  un- 
alterable devotion  of  themself  to  the  triumph  of 
mind  over  matter,  of  self  over  not-self !  And 
yet  who  expects  to  succeed  without  it? 

Let  the  idea  once  gain  complete  possession  of 
a  man  that  the  development  of  his  own  nature 
— the  supremacy  of  the  soul  over  all  its  foes  is 
possible,  and  let  him  give  himself  to  this  end  as 
the  vestal  virgins  gave  their  lives  to  the  altar, 
and  the  young  Hannibal  gave  his  to  vengeance, 
and  nature  will  retreat  and  cower  like  a 
whipped  dog. 

I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  in  the  long 

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Hits  and  Misses 

run  she  will  not  wear  out  the  engine  which  is 
the  instrument  of  this  spirit's  earthly  activities. 
I  do  not  mean  that  she  will  not  at  last  conquer 
the  machine,  but  that  she  cannot  crush  the  en- 
gineer. I  affirm  that  the  man  is  never  con- 
quered until  he  surrenders.  I  declare  that  the 
soul  is  invincible  as  long  as  it  retains  its  integ- 
rity, its  nobility,  its  confidence.  Even  though 
it  be  at  last  fastened  to  the  chariot  wheels  of 
Nature  as  kings  were  to  those  of  the  Caesars, 
it  is  still  a  king,  if  it  walks  erect! 

This  is  the  real  victory. 

The  soul  will  attain  more  than  this  by  such 
dedication.  She  will  see  obstacles  vanish  like 
mists.  She  will  see  environment  made  plastic 
to  her  touch,  like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  pot- 
ter. But  the  thing  which  is  inviolably  certain 
is  that  even  in  her  defeat  she  will  be  a  victor, 
for  she  will  demonstrate  that  nothing  in  her 
surroundings  can  extinguish  the  light,  the  joy, 
the  hope,  the  confidence  in  herself. 

It  was  the  glory  of  the  Apostle  Paul  and  of 
the  founders  of  the  Christian  religion,  that 
they  made  the  development  of  the  soul  itself 
their  one  sublime  aim.  It  was  their  doctrine 
that  it  could  be  superior  to  all  that  could  hap- 
pen to  it,  and  this  doctrine  they  learned  from 
their  Master.  Preserve  the  integrity  of  the 
soul,  for  where  it  is  lost  all  is  lost ;  while  it  is 

64 


Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

safe  all  is  safe.  Such  was  his  view.  Every- 
thing may  escape  you.  Everything  will  escape 
you  but  your  soul.  But  so  long  as  you  possess 
your  soul  you  have  all.  What  shall  it  profit 
if  you  gain  the  world  and  lose  your  soul  ?  is  a 
reversible  interrogation.  What  shall  it  harm 
you  if  you  lose  the  world  and  gain  your  soul  ? 

Have  you  ever  clearly  perceived  these 
truths  ?  Have  you  ever  attained  this  utter  con- 
secration of  yourself  to  that  victory  which 
overcometh  the  world?  I  ask  you,  you  who 
are  discouraged  and  weak,  you  who  are  being 
driven  along  like  chaff  in  the  wind,  you  who 
are  floating  like  a  straw  in  a  great  river — do 
you  think  you  would  be  thus  driven  and  tossed 
if  you  should  set  your  will  as  a  sailor  sets  his 
rudder  in  a  storm? 

Is  not  the  whole  trouble  with  you  right  here  ? 
Then  begin  at  the  point  of  failure.  Dedi- 
cate yourself  to  victory.  Be  the  master  of 
your  destiny.  Determine  to  triumph  over  the 
environment  that  has  thus  made  you  its  vic- 
tim. Match  your  soul  against  every  foe.  Try 
another  fall  with  the  enemies  who  have  over- 
powered you.  Determine  that  you  will  con- 
quer and  you  will! 

If  you  think  yourself  to  be  a  shuttlecock 
between  the  battledoors  of  Fate,  you  will  be. 
If  you  believe  that  ''environment"  can  extin- 

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Hits  and  Misses 

guish  your  light,  it  will  extinguish  your  light. 
But  if  you  will  begin  now  to  believe  in  the 
superiority  of  spirit  over  matter,  immortality 
over  mortality,  life  over  death,  you  will  feel 
new  springs  of  powers  and  resistance  swell  up 
from  the  depths  of  your  beings  like  fountains 
in  a  desert.  Dedicate  yourself  to  victory  over 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  and  ''neither 
death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities, 
nor  powers,  nor  things  present,  nor  things  to 
come,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other 
creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate  you  from  the 
love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord." 
And  now  I  ask  you  whether  I  have  belittled 
the  potent  influences  of  environment  un- 
duly? I  have  not  meant  to,  for  no  one 
knows  better  than  I  by  personal  experience 
its  fearful  compulsive  power.  Who  has  not 
too  often  been  its  victim  or  its  beneficiary 
to  either  disparage  or  ignore  it?  A  few 
days  ago,  on  my  return  from  my  class  in 
the  University,  I  walked  through  Burnett 
Woods.  The  rustle  of  the  leaves  under  my 
feet,  the  dropping  of  the  nuts,  the  chirping 
of  the  squirrels,  and  the  odors  of  decaying 
vegetation  transported  me  to  the  scenes  of  my 
boyhood.  So  powerful  was  the  effect  of  that 
scene  of  almost  transcendent  beauty  as  to  play 
my  imagination  false.     Under  its  potent  spell 

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Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

I  lost  the  senses  of  locality  and  of  time.  Once 
more  I  was  a  boy !  The  trees  were  those  of 
the  grand  old  forests  around  my  native  village. 
I  was  tiptoeing  along  a  well-known  rabbit  track 
to  open  the  traps  I  had  set  the  night  before.  I 
was  climbing  the  chestnut  trees  and  shaking  the 
nuts  from  the  loosened  burrs  to  the  crowd  of 
shouting  youngsters  beneath.  I  was  watching 
the  squirrels  leap  from  limb  to  limb,  I  was  gath- 
ering the  yellow  goldenrod  and  the  scarlet 
sumach  in  the  corners  of  the  stake  and  rider 
fences. 

In  this  autumn  atmosphere  of  fantasy,  I 
strolled  along  until  I  came  upon  a  party  of 
children  who  were  making  the  very  welkin 
ring  with  their  noisy  shoutings.  Their  Sun- 
day-school teacher  (like  some  divine  Pandora, 
or  a  more  heavenly  Madonna)  moved  gently 
and  benignantly  among  them.  They  romped, 
they  laughed,  they  played,  they  shouted,  they 
gathered  the  scarlet  and  golden  leaves  into 
baskets,  or  twined  them  into  wreaths  and 
crowns.  The  birds  sang  in  the  trees,  the  blue 
dome  of  heaven  bent  caressingly  over  us — life 
seemed  a  happy  dream.  My  soul  expanded, 
and  my  eyes  suffused  with  tears.  I  said  to 
myself,  in  half-articulated  words,  'Tn  such  a 
scene  as  this  one  could  be  always  happy." 

Such  is  the  influence  of  environment ! 
67 


Hits  and  Misses 

But  shall  I  confess? 

Five  minutes  had  not  passed  away,  and  I 
was  still  slowly  moving  amidst  these  beauteous 
holy  influences,  when  I  became  suddenly  and 
painfully  conscious  that  my  thoughts  had 
slipped  back  into  the  old  channel.  The  cares 
of  life  had  once  more  rolled  upon  me.  The 
imagination  had  ceased  to  act,  and  the  mind 
was  busy  with  the  stern  and  pressing  problems 
of  the  present  hour.  Environment  had  demon- 
strated its  own  incapacity  by  ceasing  to  buoy 
up  the  heavy  heart  upon  its  surface.  With  one 
dull  plunge  it  had  sunk  down  into  the  deeps. 

Truly,  "the  soul  is  its  own  place,  and  of  a 
heaven  can  make  a  hell,  or  hell  of  heaven."  A 
beautiful  environment  can  no  more  make  a 
base  soul  beautiful,  unaided  and  alone,  than  it 
can  make  a  beautiful  soul  base,  without  that 
soul's  consent. 

With  all  my  heart  I  believe  in  the  beneficence 
of  a  good  and  the  bane  of  a  bad  environment ; 
but  it  is  because  I  believe  in  the  power  of  the 
self-conscious  soul  to  be  superior  to  both,  if  it 
determines  that  it  will,  that  I  am  here  to-day. 

My  friends,  we,  too,  live  in  the  midst  of  evil 
influences  like  those  to  whom  the  Apostle 
wrote.  We  pass  the  time  of  our  sojourn 
amidst  a  crooked  and  perverse  generation. 
But  we,  too,  like  them,  may  be  here  and  now, 

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Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

blameless  and  harmless,  the  sons  of  God  with- 
out rebuke,  and  may  shine  as  lights  in  this 
wicked  world. 

But  in  order  to  do  this,  you  must  take  these 
influences  by  the  very  throat.  You  cannot 
trifle  with  them.  You  cannot  give  them  a 
single  inch  of  rope. 

Everywhere  you  may  hear  that  pitiful  and 
pusillanimous  wail  that  rises  from  the  lips 
of  weak-kneed  and  feeble-minded  men  and 
women :  *'It  is  impossible  to  resist  the  evil 
influences  of  business  and  society.  The  cur- 
rent is  too  strong.  We  must  go  with  it.  The 
most  we  can  do  is  to  utter  a  spiritual  protest, 
to  show  that  our  souls  are  at  least  conscious  of 
all  the  littleness  and  meanness  of  life." 

It  is  an  awful  age!  The  drift  away  from 
the  old  ideals  is  like  that  of  an  ocean  current. 
Everywhere  are  Sabbath  desecration,  social 
gambling,  social  drinking,  commercial  dis- 
honor, easy  morals,  and  easier  marriage  bonds, 
multitudes  of  our  companions  taking  the  color 
of  their  lives  from  their  surroundings,  as  unre- 
sistingly and  as  indifferently  as  chameleons. 

But  while  we  shrug  our  shoulders  and  ex- 
cuse our  susceptibility  to  these  influences,  let 
us  ask  ourselves  what  the  old  Apostle  Paul 
would  have  done  in  our  places.  Right  well 
we  know!     The  influences  of  this  age,  which 

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Hits  and  Misses 

have  warped  and  twisted  us  all  but  out  of  shape, 
would  have  bent  that  lofty  soul  about  as  much 
as  a  poison-ivy  plant  the  mighty  oak  round 
which  it  twines.  These  baneful  habits  would 
have  affected  him  about  as  much  as  the  shadow 
of  a  crow's  wing  falling  on  a  rock.  Recall 
his  life.  Revisit  in  your  imagination  the  scenes 
through  which  he  passed.  Compare  the  influ- 
ences which  surround  you  with  those  which 
entangled  him  in  his  journeys  amidst  the  cities 
of  the  ancient  world — the  comparatively  pure 
atmosphere  which  envelops  the  citizen  of  an 
average  American  town  with  those  mephitic 
odors  which  men  breathed  in  Ephesus  and 
Corinth!  But  he  came  out  of  it  all  as  Sha- 
drach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego  came  out  of  the 
fires  of  the  furnace. 

I  think  that  in  our  best  moments  we  are 
seized  with  a  species  of  self-loathing  and  con- 
tempt for  our  own  weakness.  We,  who  know 
history,  who  know  life,  who  know  where  all 
these  streams  of  tendency  lead  at  last,  who 
know  and  yet  who  drift!  We  who  permit  our- 
selves to  be  influenced,  to  be  molded,  to  be 
corrupted  by  these  crazy  throngs  who  go  to 
the  shambles  like  silly  sheep.  And  the  piti- 
fullest  thing  about  it  is  that  there  are  so  many 
people  of  mind,  of  heart,  of  soul,  so  superior 
to   those   who   mold   them   thus.     How   con- 

70 


Laying  a  Modern  Specter 

stantly  and  with  what  unutterable  sadness 
do  we  see  those  who  are  naturally  high-minded 
and  noble-hearted  giving  in  and  giving  up  to 
people  of  base  souls  and  debauched  manners  I 
Pitiful  surrender !  Base  contamination !  Un- 
holy perversion !  It  is  as  if  a  lion  should  be 
persuaded  to  eat  carrion  by  a  jackal ! 

Now  why,  let  me  ask  you,  should  we  not 
mold  such  people  instead  of  being  molded  by 
them?  Is  there  nothing  noble  and  inspiring  in 
exerting  the  strongest  influence?  Have  you 
never  thrilled  with  the  just  pride  of  bowing 
the  will  and  purpose  of  a  base  man  to  yours,  or 
lifting  him  up  in  spite  of  himself  when  he  tried 
to  drag  you  down?  Why  not  change  your 
environment  instead  of  being  changed  by  it? 

Shame  on  us !     What  we  need  is  a  Paul  or 
two  among  us,  to  show  us  how  a  man  can 
really  be  a  master!     I   can  almost  hear  the 
words  which  he  would  utter  if  he  stood  where 
we  are  standing  now !     "Age  of  unreason,  rest- 
lessness, senselessness,  materialism,  sensuality, 
you  may  roll  over  me  like  a  flood,  but  you  can- 
not budge  me  from  my  bed.     You  may  grmd 
over  me  like  a  glacier,  but  you  cannot  sweep 
me  from  my  moorings.     When  you  have  gone 
past  me  I  shall  still  be  here,  deeply  anchored, 
firmly  rooted,  the  same  old  Paul!     There  is 
but  one  true  life,  and  I  propose  to  live  it. 

71 


Hits  and  Misses 

There  is  but  one  divine  ideal,  and  I  am  deter- 
mined to  attain  it.  You  can  deride  me,  you 
can  reject  me,  you  can  abuse  me,  you  can 
impoverish  me,  you  can  crucify  me  again,  if  you 
want  to,  but  change  me  you  cannot!  My  heart 
is  fixed !  To  be  pure,  to  be  true,  to  be  honest, 
to  be  a  righteous  man,  to  live  for  God  as  Jesus 
did,  this  is  my  fixed  and  unalterable  determina- 
tion. Rocks  shall  fly  from  their  firm  base 
sooner  than  I.  The  mountain  must  come  to 
Mahomet,  for  Mahomet  will  not  go  to  the 
mountain." 

The  world  wants  lighthouse  men !  Be  thou 
another  Paul ;  or  better  yet,  your  own  true 
self,  redeemed,  courageous,  determined,  conse- 
crated. Be  a  blameless  man  and  harmless,  a 
son  of  God  without  rebuke  in  the  midst  of  a 
crooked  and  perverse  generation,  and  shine  like 
a  beautiful  and  cheering  light. 


73 


The  Very  First  Thing 


"From  this  moment 

The  very  firstlings  of  my  heart  shall  he 
the  firstlings  of  my  hand.    And  even  now, 
To  crown  my  thoughts  with  acts,  he  it 
Thought  and  done. 

— Shakespeare. 

"So  great  is  the  good  I  look  for,  that  every  hard- 
ship delights  me." 

— St.  Francis. 

"Here  lies  the  body  of  Gen.  Charles  George  Gordon 
who,  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  gave  his  strength 
to  the  weak,  his  substance  to  the  poor,  his  sympathies 
to  the  suffering  and  his  heart  to  God." 

— Epitaph. 

"Whatsoever  thy  hand  Undeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy 
might  :  for  there  is  no  work  nor  device,  nor  knozvl- 
edge,  nor  wisdom  in  the  grave  whither  thou  goest." 

— Ecclesiastes. 


"But  seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God." 
Matt,  vi,  33. 

It  is  the  first  day  of  a  new  year.  A  thou- 
sand milHon  men,  women  and  little  children 
have  run  another  lap  in  the  great  life-race. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  have  fallen  by  the  way, 
overcome  by  sickness  or  old  age.  Hundreds 
of  thousands,  issuing  through  the  myste- 
rious gate  into  the  great  arena,  have  made  their 
feeble  start  upon  their  little  hands  and  knees. 
Some  have  gained  crowns  and  scepters,  some 
have  been  reduced  to  poverty  or  to  beggary. 
The  moans  of  the  defeated  mingle  their  minor 
chords  with  the  glad  songs  of  the  victors ;  and 
the  panting  procession  pauses  for  a  few  mo- 
ments at  one  of  the  turns,  to  rest  and  to  reflect. 

Multitudes  have  gathered  on  this  holy  mom, 
in  houses  set  apart  for  prayer;  and  to  favored 
men  has  been  given  the  opportunity — as  to  me 
— ^to  speak  to  them  words  of  warning  or 
encouragement  and  hope. 

It  is  a  solemn  privilege  and  responsibility. 
It  was  upon  some  similar  occasion  that  a  great 
preacher  exclaimed,   "I  have  a  half-hour  to 

75 


Hits  and  Misses 

raise  the  dead ;"  and  the  deep  awe  with  which 
Whitefield  always  looked  upon  an  audience  of 
dying  men  led  his  biographer  to  say  of  him 
that  on  such  occasions  "he  thought  of  nothing 
but  the  immortality  and  the  misery  of  man." 

For  myself,  as  I  face  this  audience  of  men 
and  women  of  education,  of  power,  and  of  influ- 
ence, I  feel  like  a  warrior  who  for  a  few  mo- 
ments has  been  permitted  to  smite  with  the 
sword  of  Scandenberg  or  David — an  admiral 
who  has  a  half-hour  in  which  to  touch  all  the 
springs  and  levers  and  lanyards  on  a  battleship. 

I  must  not  waste  this  precious  time,  and  I 
have  chosen  for  your  meditation  words  than 
which  there  are  no  more  momentous  in  the 
spoken  or  written  language  of  man — the  words 
of  Jesus  Christ,  an  utterance  pregnant  with  des- 
tiny, weighty  with  command,  appealing  with 
irresistible  authority  to  every  conscience.  My 
exposition  of  them  may  be  weak,  but  they  are 
strong;  and  as  the  beauty  of  the  rainbow  is 
not  diminished  by  the  poverty  of  the  poet's 
verse,  nor  the  force  of  gravity  by  the  scientist's 
feeble  description,  so  they  will  survive  the  fool- 
ishness of  my  preaching. 

"Seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God." 

There  is  a  first  love,  a  first  purpose  in  every 
human  heart.  There  is  alwavs  a  taproot.  No 
matter  how  many  mouths  the  fountain  has,  the 

76 


The  Very  First  Thing 

water  enters  through  a  single  pipe.  There  is 
in  your  heart  and  mine  an  elemental,  primary 
principle,  passion,  purpose,  aspiration,  which  is 
what  we  really  are.  More  and  more  we  be- 
come what  this  first  thing  really  is.  No  mat- 
ter how  many  other  interests  we  have  or  desires 
we  cherish,  this  thing,  which  is  the  core  of  our 
being,  is  our  real  selves. 

Some  men  are  essentially  idlers,  shirks. 
They  work,  they  toil,  but  it  is  because  they 
must.  Their  one  over-mastering  passion  is  to 
evade  toil,  responsibility,  care.  They  realize 
their  heart's  desire  only  when  they  crawl  into 
their  place  of  rest.  They  do  not,  like  the  lion, 
creep  into  their  lair  that  they  may  rest  to  hunt 
again ;  but  hunt  in  order  that  they  may  crawl 
into  their  lair  and  rest  again. 

Some  men  are  epicures. 

Last  Christmas  day  such  a  man,  under  the 
influence  of  one  of  those  fleeting,  superficial 
fancies  which  seize  us  all  at  times,  gave  to  a 
bootblack  what  he  thought  to  be  a  dime,  and 
wished  him  well.  Upon  arriving  at  his  home 
he  discovered  that  he  had  mistaken  it  for  a 
five-dollar  gold  piece.  Early  the  next  morn- 
ing he  hurried  to  the  barber-shop  and  found 
that  the  little  boy  had  spent  his  gift  for  a  suit  of 
clothes.  *Tt  is  not  often  a  little  fellow  like 
me  is  so  kindly  treated,  even  on  Christmas 

77 


Hits  and  Misses 

day,"  he  said,  smiling  gratefully  at  his  patron. 
But  the  epicure,  writhing  with  the  conflicting 
passions  of  generosity  and  selfishness,  yielded 
to  his  evil  nature,  and  insisted  that  the  proprie- 
tor of  the  shop  should  give  him  back  four 
dollars,  and  make  the  little  bootblack  "work 
it  out  with  his  brush"  at  the  rate  of  two  dollars 
a  week. 

And  yet  that  very  man  "thought  nothing," 
said  my  informant,  "of  spending  fifty  cents  for 
a  piece  of  foreign  cheese  no  bigger  than  three 
fingers." 

Any  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  book  of 
James  knows  where  that  man's  God  is.  His 
primal  instinct  is  self-love.  His  taproot  runs 
down  into  his  larder.  Stomach  is  king.  Thank 
God  there  are  other  kinds  of  people  in  the 
world ! 

The  first  passion  of  some  men  is  the  relief  of 
sorrow. 

Down  at  the  corner  of  Pearl  and  Third  there 
is  a  cellar  which  is  a  sort  of  cul-de-sac — a 
dungeon  with  high  walls  and  no  staircase, 
accessible  only  by  an  elevator.  A  few  days 
ago  a  little  kitten,  chased  by  a  dog,  came  tear- 
ing down  the  pavement  and  plunged  into  it 
for  a  refuge.  The  employes  in  the  store  tried 
for  five  days  to  get  it  out  before  they  succeeded, 
for  it  was  terrified  and  hid  in  impenetrable 

78 


The  Very  First  Thing 

comers.  The  next  day  after  it  had  been  liber- 
ated a  schoolboy  entered  the  store  and  asked 
what  had  become  of  the  kitten.  When  he  was 
told  that  she  had  been  emancipated  from  her 
captivity  he  said,  "I  am  glad,  and  I  am  sorry." 
"What  do  you  know  about  it?"  asked  the  clerk. 
"I  have  been  dividing  my  dinner  with  it  for 
five  days,"  he  said  simply,  and  passed  out. 

Let  us  put  up  a  prayer  to  God  that  this 
first  feeling  of  sympathy  may  never  be  second 
to  any  other  in  the  heart  of  the  little  boy ! 

This  feeling  is  not  confined  to  the  breasts  of 
hoys.  An  English  sparrow  had  found  an  open 
place  in  a  frozen  gutter  over  on  the  top  of  a 
Mound  street  balcony  one  cold  morning  last 
week.  He  scarcely  waited  to  dip  in  his  little 
bill,  throw  back  his  little  head,  and  slake  the 
thirst  in  his  little  throat  before  he  flew  away 
and  brought  back  five  other  little  companions 
with  him,  more  thirsty  than  himself.  I  have 
always  loved  these  little  wretches  on  the  sly, 
and  now  I  proclaim  my  admiration  on  the 
housetops ! 

Well,  to  go  back,  there  is  always  a  taproot, 
a  core,  a  ''first"  thing  in  every  heart ;  and  Jesus 
Christ  says  that  in  every  true  heart  it  will  be  a 
V>ve  for  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

According  to  my  understanding  of  his 
thought  the  "Kingdom  of  God"  possessed  a 

79 


Hits  and  Misses 

double  meaning  to  the  mind  of  the  Master. 
Sometimes  it  was  an  external  Kingdom  in  the 
visible  world,  of  which  all  men  should  ulti- 
mately be  the  happy  and  virtuous  citizens.  But 
sometimes  it  was  an  internal  empire  in  the 
heart  of  the  man  himself,  and  I  cannot  doubt 
that  in  this  sublime  command  he  bade  us  make 
the  establishment  of  both  these  kingdoms  the 
fundamental  passion  of  our  hearts  and  lives. 

Let  us  consider  the  external  kingdom  first. 
I  ask  you  whether  down  in  the  core  of  your 
hearts,  its  "coming"  is  your  first  and  all-con- 
suming passion.  It  was  Christ's,  Follow  His 
footsteps  in  a  swift  flight  of  memory  through 
His  earthly  ministry,  and  see  if  it  was  not  so. 
At  almost  every  turn  you  come  upon  the  revela- 
tion of  a  burning  conception,  of  a  world  from 
which  sin  had  been  banished,  and  in  which 
dwelt  a  humanity  bound  together  in  the  invin- 
cible bonds  of  love.  His  eyes  r6amed  outward 
from  the  little  land  of  Palestine  to  the  nations 
which  "wandered  as  sheep  without  a  shep- 
herd," and  He  yearned  to  gather  them  into  a 
single  fold.  While  other  men  were  consumed 
by  the  desire  to  establish  their  private  fortunes, 
His  soul  pondered  the  great  world  problems. 
Why  are  the  nations  at  war?  Why  does  not 
the  broken  family  unite  around  the  Father's 
hearthstone?     "The   field   is   the   world,"    he 

80 


The  Very  First  Thing 

cried.  ''And  I,"  he  exclaimed,  "if  I  be  Hfted 
up,  will  draw  all  men  unto  me."  "Go  ye  into 
all  the  world,"  he  commanded,  "and  preach  the 
gospel  unto  every  creature."  As  Alexander 
sighed  for  an  empire  of  blood  and  iron  that 
should  extend  over  the  whole  habitable  globe, 
Jesus  labored  and  wept  and  prayed  for  one  of 
peace  and  love.  For  this  dream  He  gave  His 
life.  He  was  a  martyr  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
He  existed  and  he  perished,  to  unite  humanity 
in  a  sublime  brotherhood. 

And  every  man  who  becomes  his  true  disciple 
must  be  like  him — the  victim  of  an  imperishable 
and  consuming  vision,  the  vision  of  a  ransomed 
and  regenerated  race  of  men. 

In  proportion  to  the  vividness  of  that  dream 
and  the  intensity  of  that  passion,  men  become 
the  followers  of  Christ.  And  how  can  men 
help  cherishing  it?  It  would  seem  as  if  the 
thought  of  humanity  remaining  in  its  present 
condition  of  antagonism  and  strife  and  bitter- 
ness and  hatred  would  crush  a  heart  of  stone 
and  melt  a  heart  of  iron.  Can  you  endure  to 
think  of  these  countless  nations  of  earth-like 
colossal  cats  in  an  indestructible  bag,  clawing 
and  biting  and  tearing  each  other  to  pieces  for 
centuries  and  centuries  to  come,  as  they  have 
done  in  the  past,  without  an  emotion  of  horror  ? 
If  this  is  all  there  is  to  look  forward  to,  if 

8i 


Hits  and  Misses 

Nature  in  her  blind  birth  throes  can  bring  forth 
from  the  womb  of  time  nothing  better  than 
this,  then  I  say  for  one  that  I  am  ready  to  see 
a  mill  stone  fastened  to  the  neck  of  the  bag  and 
the  whole  accursed  litter  sunk  in  the  depths  of 
the  sea.  I  do  not  think  I  could  live,  unless  I 
believed  in  the  final  coming  of  the  Kingdom 
and  the  King.  I  do  believe  in  it !  I  believe 
the  best  is  yet  to  be.  The  golden  age  is  not  in 
the  past,  but  the  future.  The  lion  and  the  lamb 
are  to  lie  down  together,  and  a  little  child  shall 
lead  them.  A  *'new  world"  swims  before  my 
raptured  vision.  Whoever  dreams  of  it  and 
labors  for  it  is  my  brother — whether  Plato  in 
his  "Republic,"  Augustine  in  his  "City  of  God," 
Moore  in  his  "Eutopia,"  or  Milton  in  his  "Para- 
dise Regained,"  or  Bellamy  in  his  "Looking 
Backward,"  or  any  wild-eyed  victim  of  trades 
unionism  or  socialistic  nightmares !  Let  this 
hope  lie  in  the  core  of  his  being,  let  this  passion 
for  a  world-wide  empire  of  fellowship  and  love 
be  fundamental  with  him,  and  my  heart  and 
hand  will  leap  to  him  in  sympathy.  Who 
would  not  labor  for  it?  Who  would  not  die 
for  it?  It  must  come,  or  the  world  will  be 
transformed  into  a  madhouse.  Humanity  is 
arriving  at  self-consciousness,  and  its  sensitive 
spirit  cannot  forever  endure  this  horrible  dis- 
appointment and  these  frightful  contradictions. 

82 


The  Very  First  Thing 

This  Kingdom  is  a  spiritual  necessity.  Seek 
it  first.  Subordinate  all  else  to  its  realization. 
This  is  the  command  of  the  Christ. 

B.  In  the  second  place  there  is  a  Kingdom  of 
God  to  be  erected  in  our  own  souls,  and  its 
establishment  also  was  a  primal  passion  of  the 
Christ,  and  ought  to  be  of  ours.  To  preserve 
the  beautiful  harmony  of  all  his  faculties,  the 
sublime  equilibrium  of  all  his  feelings,  to  keep 
everything  in  perfect  order  and  the  white  dove 
of  peace  continually  hovering  in  the  sacred, 
quiet  atmosphere  of  his  soul,  such  was  the  pas- 
sion of  Jesus.  For  this  he  struggled  in  the 
wilderness,  for  this  he  shed  those  drops  of 
bloody  sweat  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane. 

Is  this  true  of  you  this  New  Year's  Day  ?  It 
ought  to  be.  So  far  as  our  personal  selves  are 
concerned,  there  is  one  paramount  and  primary 
duty.  It  is  to  be  "perfect,  even  as  our  Father 
in  Heaven  is  perfect."  We  must  bring  intO'  a 
state  of  absolute  harmony  the  discordant  pow- 
ers of  our  soul.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  that 
the  soul  is  like  a  delicate  machine  in  its  capacity 
for  working  smoothly  and  beautifully,  when 
all  is  well.  It  may  become  like  a  fine  chro- 
nometer in  which  no  sound  is  heard  but  the 
delicate  click  of  the  escapement  while  every 
toothed  wheel  plays  quietly  upon  its  own  pivot 
and  into  the  cogs  of  its  neighbor,  or  like  a  great 

83 


Hits  and  Misses 

Corliss  engine,  in  which  without  a  jar  the 
mighty  fly  wheel  revolves  and  the  piston 
plunges,  day  after  day  and  night  after  night, 
the  incarnation  of  equilibrium  and  power.  To 
bring  the  soul  to  this  quiet  and  perfect  poise 
and  self-possession,  to  make  the  affections,  the 
judgment  and  the  will  play  into  each  other's 
hands  with  this  noiseless  precision,  to  make 
Conscience  king  over  this  now  turbulent  and 
anarchic  realm  is  not  only  a  possibility,  but  the 
primal  duty  of  man.  This  has  been  the  passion 
of  other  men  beside  the  Christ.  Listen  for 
example  to  the  mellifluous  words  of  Milton : 
''As  to  other  points,  what  God  may  have  deter- 
mined for  me  I  know  not ;  but  this  I  know,  that 
if  he  ever  instilled  an  intense  love  of  moral 
beauty  into  the  breast  of  any  man,  he  has  in- 
stilled it  into  mine.  Ceres,  in  the  fable,  pur- 
sued not  her  daughter  with  a  greater  keenness 
of  inquiry,  than  I  day  and  night  the  idea  of 
perfection." 

Such  is  the  first  duty  of  man. 

Have  you  done  it  ?  asks  the  dying  voice  of  the 
Old  Year.     Will  you  do  it  ?  says  the  New. 

I  speak  to  a  company  of  people,  who  have 
been  more  than  ordinarily  successful  in  solving 
the  so-called  "problem  of  life."  You  have  at- 
tained a  high  degree  of  culture  and  wealth. 
You  represent  much  of  the  best  results  of  our 

84 


The  Very  First  Thing 

modern  life ;  but  I  push  the  question  of  the  two 
years  home,  and  ask  you  to  answer,  whether 
this  culture  and  prosperity  have  not  served  to 
blind  you  to  a  greater  degree  than  you  have 
thought,  to  these  great  primal  duties. 

It  has  always  been  a  terrible  law  of  life,  that 
when  communities  acquired  a  high  degree  of 
wealth  and  culture  they  began  to  devote  them- 
selves to  pleasure,  and  in  doing  so  forgot  per- 
fection. In  the  rough  and  arduous  hours  of 
struggle  with  obstacles,  we  retain  by  a  sort  of 
stern  necessity  a  certain  hardy  virtue.  But 
when  we  have  attained  the  prize,  decay  sets  in. 
It  was  not  the  rigors  of  the  Alps,  but  the 
languors  of  Capua  that  sapped  the  courage  and 
virtue  of  Hannibal's  army. 

Upon  the  stupefied  sense  of  every  generation 
of  successful  men  who  have  achieved  wealth 
and  devoted  themselves  to  pleasure,  the  old 
Circean  myth  rises  like  an  apparition.  The 
hardy  companions  of  Ulvsses,  who  had  stood 
out  against  war  and  famine  and  flood,  suc- 
cumbed to  the  food,  the  drink,  the  music  of  the 
luxurious  queen.  She  touched  them  with  her 
wand,  and  sent  them  to  feed  with  swine.  Their 
high  manhood  was  debased.  Their  ambitions 
were  quenched.  Their  hardy  spirits  were  en- 
meshed in  the  thralls  of  mere  brutality.  To 
eat   and   sleep,    such   was   the   fate   of   those 

85 


Hits  and  Misses 

wretched  devotees  of  pleasure.  Such  will  be 
ours,  if  we  have  no  higher  aim  than  to  eat,  to 
drink,  and  to  be  merry.  To-morrow  we  will 
die,  or  that  which  is  best  will  die  in  us ! 

A  few  months  ago  a  young  lieutenant  in  the 
navy,  whose  whole  life  had  been  a  long  and 
arduous  struggle  with  hardship,  went  down  in 
the  darkness  of  midnight  with  a  handful  of 
companions  to  perform  a  deed  of  daring  which 
has  set  his  name  upon  the  same  scroll  as  that  of 
the  Maccabees,  the  Gracchi,  of  Leonidas,  and 
Bruce.  While  the  waves  rolled  over  him  and 
the  shot  and  shell  hissed  and  burst  above  his 
head,  he  was  a  hero.  But  when  he  emerged 
from  danger  and  obscurity  to  meet  the  bravos 
of  men  and  the  adoration  of  women,  he  fell. 
Like  a  doll  baby,  he  suffered  himself  to  be 
petted  and  kissed,  until  his  honored  name  has 
become  a  bye-word  and  reproach,  and  a  dis- 
gusted nation  is  ready  to  implore  the  United 
States  government  to  keep  her  young  lieuten- 
ants under  water,  to  pickle  them  in  ocean  brine, 
until  their  blood  has  turned  to  ice  and  their 
hearts  to  marble. 

Am  I  wrong  in  my  suspicions  that  there  are 
strong  muscles  that  have  been  relaxed  by  lux- 
ury in  this  community  ?  Are  there  no  victims 
of  pleasure  here?  This  deadly  atmosphere 
asphyxiates  its  victims  so  sweetly  and  gently 

86 


The  Very  First  Thing 

that  they  are  unconscious  often  until  it  is  too 
late.  An  environment  like  this  is  a  dangerous 
if  not  a  deadly  one.  We  are  moulded  to  it  and 
take  its  style  as  chameleons  take  their  color 
from  the  trees.  Our  hearts  are  like  wax  to 
this  potent  die  of  luxury. 

Occasionally  we  find  a  soul  superior  to  its 
power.  He  opposes  an  invincible  front  to  its 
solicitations.  While  he  is  in  this  world  of  ease 
and  softness  he  is  not  of  it.  He  seems  to  dwell 
remote  like  a  star.  He  is  solitary  in  a  crowd. 
It  does  not  concern  him  what  others  do  or 
think,  he  pursues  his  aim  resistlessly  onward 
and  upward. 

''Had  I  melted  into  my  surroundings  instead 
of  reading  and  writing  continually,  life  had  not 
been  so  dismal,  but  I  lived  among  the  stars  an 
abstemious  ghost,"  said  Joaquin  Miller,  writ- 
ing of  a  memorable  period  of  trial  and  bitter- 
ness. 

"Melted  into  his  surroundings !"  Aye,  there 
is  the  deadly  method  by  which  spiritual  death 
comes  to  most  of  us.  We  melt  into  our  sur- 
roundings, like  tallow  into  a  mould !  What 
this  world  needs  is  more  men  who  live  among 
the  stars — abstemious  ghosts ! 

I  am  no  ascetic !  I  do  not  plead  for  poverty 
and  self-crucifixion  as  good  in  themselves. 
They  are  no  more  good  in  themselves  than 

87 


Hits  and  Misses 

wealth  and  luxury.  And  it  would  do  no  good 
to  advocate  them  even  if  they  were.  Nothing 
is  more  certain  than  the  acquisition  of  wealth. 
We  are  foreordained  to  luxury.  Man,  with  his 
knowledge  of  nature  and  control  over  her  re- 
sources, will  sow  this  world  chin  deep  in  works 
of  art  and  luxury  before  he  is  done.  We  must 
learn  how  to  use  and  despise  luxury  at  the  same 
time,  or  we  are  doomed !  What  I  plead  for  is 
the  spiritual  imbuement  which  shall  make  men 
superior  to  their  environment,  and  insensible 
to  the  deadly  fumes  of  wealth  and  pleasure 
while  they  breath  them. 

There  is  a  life,  a  power,  an  imbuement  like 
this.  Let. a  man  become  consecrated  to  some 
noble  endeavor,  let  there  but  come  into  his  life 
a  holy  passion  for  perfection,  let  the  Kingdom 
of  God  become  his  master,  moving  vision,  and 
he  is  safe.  At  once  he  rises  to  the  stars  and 
dwells  among  them,  and  the  earth  worms,  look- 
ing up  from  the  deadly  night  shades  and  fumes 
midst  which  they  crawl,  see  in  him  an  ''abste- 
mious ghost !" 

It  is  a  race  of  such  abstemious  ghosts  among 
the  stars  that  these  last  years  of  the  old  century 
needs.  If  luxury  and  wealth  are  indeed  to 
enervate  men  and  take  the  soul  and  spirit  out 
of  them,  I  could  be  content,  for  one,  to  see  the 


88 


The  Very  First  Thing 

temples  and  palaces,  the  works  of  art  and  vertu 
erased  from  the  earth  Hke  the  figures  of  a  dem- 
onstrated proposition  from  the  blank  face  of  a 
black-board.  I  should  prefer  to  see  humanity 
begin  again  that  arduous  search  and  struggle 
and  endeavor  which  has  formed  our  heroes  and 
saints,  and  as  it  were  created  the  soul.  If  I 
thought  that  my  life  in  this  beautiful  parish, 
surrounded  by  friends,  relieved  of  care,  and 
supplied  with  the  coveted  goods  of  life,  were 
relaxing  my  aspirations  and  clouding  my  spirit- 
ual vision,  I  have  still  strength  left  to  wish  that 
I  might  be  thrust  back  by  violence  to  those  old 
days  of  my  youth,  when  I  "endured  hardness" 
for  Christ's  sake,  when  I  lived  in  a  hemlock 
shanty,  bought  my  daily  bread  with  the  penny 
contributions  in  a  ''hat,"  and  helped  lath  and 
shingle  the  church,  for  which  I  begged  the 
money  almost  on  my  knees. 

I  wish  you  all  a  happy  New  Year.  I  wish 
you  every  good  of  life.  But  loving  you  pas- 
sionately as  I  do,  I  pray  that  God  may  withhold 
from  you  these  treacherous  gifts  for  which  you 
are  struggling,  or  withdraw  those  which  you 
have  already  attained,  if  they  hang  like  a  veil 
before  your  spiritual  eyes,  and  like  a  mill  stone 
around  your  spiritual  neck. 

If  they  obscure  the  vision  of  the  Kingdom  of 


89 


Hits  and  Misses 

our  God  on  earth,  if  they  choke  out  the  desire 
for  spiritual  perfection,  they  are  a  curse  and  not 
a  blessing. 

Seek   first   the   Kingdom   of   God !     First ! 
First !    First ! 


90 


The   Discovery  of  God  is  the  Clari- 
fication of  the  God  Consciousness 


"The  universe  is  an  ever  fresh  and  new  creation, 
a  divine  improvisation  from  the  heart  of  God  pro- 
ceeds." 

"It  seems  as  if  I  could  sit  all  day  with  the  thought 
of  God  over-flowing  me  as  the  pebbles  lie  bathed  in  the 
willow  brook." 

"It  is  the  glory  of  man  that  he  is  satisfied  with  no 
good  below  the  highest — namely,  God." 

— Hugo  St.  Victor. 

"May  I  say  it?  It  is  not  hard  to  know  God — pro- 
vided one  will  not  force  oneself  to  define  him." 

— loubert. 

Before  an  experiment  in  electricity,  Professor 
Henry  said:  "Nozv  be  silent!  I  am  going  to  ask 
God  a  question!" 

"Whom  therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship.  Him  de- 
clare I  unto  you." — St.  Paul. 


"Canst  thoti  by  searching  Und  out  God? 
Canst  thou  Und  out  the  Almighty  unto  perfec- 
tion"?— Job  xi,  7. 

Because  we  are  mortal  we  must  answer  the 
second  of  these  interrogations  with  a  sad  and 
humble  "No." 

No,  we  cannot  find  out  God  to  perfection. 
"It  is  as  high  as  heaven,  what  can  we  do? 
Deeper  than  hell,  what  can  we  know?"  When 
the  dew  drop  extinguishes  the  fires  of  the  sun, 
when  the  ephemera  comprehends  eternity, 
when  the  firefly  illuminates  the  forest,  then, 
and  not  till  then,  shall  mortal  man  exhaust  the 
knowledge  of  the  infinite  God. 

But  our  answer  to  the  first  of  these  questions 
is  a  confident  and  unhesitating  affirmation. 
We  greet  the  sneer  of  the  cynic  and  the  wail  of 
the  skeptic,  that  "a  finite  being  can  know  noth- 
ing of  an  infinite  person,"  with  the  calm  re- 
joinder, "a  finite  man  knows  something  of  an 
infinite  universe,  and  why  not  of  an  infinite 
Being?  But  more  than  this.  Man  can  find 
out  God,  for  he  has  found  out  God !  The  age- 
long search  has  really  been  successful  1 

93 


Hits  and  Misses 

This  conviction  is  at  least  the  faith  of  him 
who  speaks  to  you  to-day.  And  what  greater 
service  can  we  render  to  each  other  than  to  re- 
veal our  faith?  Perhaps  we  cannot  dem- 
onstrate; but  we  can  testify.  Each  little  bird 
may  sing  its  matin  song,  each  star  may  shed  its 
ray  of  evening  light,  each  flower  disclose  its 
hidden  loveliness.  And  so  each  human  heart 
may  open  to  its  fellows  its  own  secret  of  happi- 
ness and  hope.  And  this  is  the  testimony  of 
the  heart  of  him  who  speaks  to  you.  The 
search  has  been  successful,  the  hidden  God  has 
been  revealed. 

The  discovery  of  God  consists  in  the  clarifica- 
tion of  the  impression  which  his  presence  in  the 
universe  has  made  upon  the  finite  mind  of  man. 

There  has  been  in  the  soul  of  humanity  from 
the  beginning  of  history  at  least,  a  "God  con- 
cept." The  origin  and  nature  of  that  concept 
varying  by  the  whole  diameter  between  Poly- 
theism and  Atheism,  has  been  the  never  ceasing 
source  of  wonder  and  speculation. 

The  inquiry  into  this  mystery  plunges  us  at 
once  into  the  deepest  problems  of  the  soul! 
What  is  the  origin  of  knowledge?  How  do 
any  ideas  at  all  awaken  in  the  mind  ? 

Some  of  them  at  least  are  vague  and  shadowy 
unrealities,  caricatures  and  exaggerations  of 
the  objects  in  the  external  universe.     They  are 

94 


The  Discovery  of  God 

figments  of  the  mind,  and  haunt  us  in  our  sleep- 
ing or  our  waking  hours  as  day  dreams  and 
nightmares.  There  is  nothing  in  the  objective 
world  to  which  they  really  correspond.  They 
have  been  compounded  in  the  laboratory  of 
thought  from  broken  visions  of  realities,  but 
are  themselves  unreal.  They  come  and  go. 
They  flit  and  reappear.  Is  the  conception  of 
God  like  them  ?  Can  any  one  believe  that  this 
idea  which  has  haunted  the  minds  of  innumera- 
ble billions  of  men  since  the  time  when  man's 
memory  runneth  not  to  the  contrary,  is  the 
unsubstantial  fabric  of  a  dream,  and  not  the 
reflection  of  some  stupendous  reality?  Has  it 
been  any  less  tenacious  than  the  concept  of  a 
material  universe?  And  if  this  concept  of  a 
universe  is  the  reflection  of  a  reality,  then  why 
is  not  the  concept  of  a  God?  What  has 
sustained  it  in  the  mind,  if  reality  has  not  ?  If 
it  is  but  a  dream,  why  do  not  we  awaken? 
Why  does  it  not  vanish  ?  Dreams  are  no  more 
self-existent  and  indestructible,  than  soap  bub- 
bles. When  a  soap  bubble  lasts  forever,  when 
a  dream  abides,  then  and  not  till  then  will  I 
believe  the  concept  of  a  God  to^  be  a  mere 
hallucination  of  the  mind.  Bubbles  burst, 
dreams  vanish,  man  awakes ! 

A  permanent  concept  must  be  the  reflection 
of  an  abiding  reality — as  a  permanent  shadow 

95 


Hits  and  Misses 

must  be  cast  by  an  abiding  object.  An  in- 
destructible idea  must  rest  upon  an  indestructi- 
ble foundation ! 

An  ignorant  old  woman  who  had  declared 
that  the  world  retained  its  equilibrium  by  rest- 
ing on  a  great  rock,  was  driven  to  desperation 
by  a  skeptic,  who  persistently  asked  her  what 
that  rock  rested  on,  and  that  one,  and  that  one, 
and  that  one?  Rising  in  anger  at  last,  she 
affirmed  with  flashing  eye  and  clenched  fist — 
that  it  was  ''rock  all  the  way  down !"  And  this 
is  what,  for  one,  I  must  believe  about  the  idea 
of  God !  It  rests  upon  a  foundation  that  is 
rock  all  the  way  down !  It  could  not  thus  per- 
sist, unless  it  were  perpetually  excited  by  an 
imperishable  reality.  I  cannot  doubt,  that  just 
as  we  think  there  is  an  objective  universe,  be- 
cause of  an  objective  universe  which  shines  and 
blows  and  burns  and  thunders  and  impinges 
upon  us,  so  we  think  there  is  a  God,  because 
there  is  a  being  who  smites  our  conscience,  fills 
our  eyes  with  tears,  and  touches  our  human 
heart  with  love. 

And  if  it  should  be  asked,  ''If  this  is  so,  why 
do  we  not  all  have  the  same  idea  of  Him?" 
nothing  is  easier  than  to  answer  back,  "Why 
do  we  not  all  have  the  same  idea  of  this  ma- 
terial universe?"  No  fact  is  more  familiar 
than  that  our  conceptions  of  this  visible  uni- 

96 


The  Discovery  of  God 

verse  vary  almost  as  much  even  in  this  scien- 
tific ag-e  as  do  those  of  "the  invisible"  God! 

Does  this  universe,  think  you,  seem  the  same 
to  the  Khamaskatcan,  or  the  savage  of  the 
Congo,  as  it  does  to  Herbert  Spencer,  or  as  it 
did  to  David  or  to  Jesus  Christ  ?  Our  concep- 
tions of  every  object,  even  the  most  simple, 
differ  as  v^idely  as  our  personalities,  and  none 
of  them  is  correct  until  our  critical  faculties 
have  been  developed. 

The  glory  of  man  lies  in  his  capacity  of 
criticism.  Slowly  and  painfully  he  eliminates 
the  fictitious  elements  from  the  original  and  un- 
scientific conceptions,  whether  of  the  visible 
universe  or  the  invisible  God ;  and  the  difficulty 
always  is,  not  that  he  does  not  see  both,  but 
that  he  does  not  see  either  accurately.  He 
does  see  both.  The  world  concept  is  no  more 
universal  than  the  God  concept.  It  is  only 
more  consciously  so.  And  if  it  be  still  asserted 
that  there  are  some  minds  in  which  the  con- 
sciousness of  God  is  not  found,  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  you  can  no  more  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  water  because  a  few  wells  are  dry,  or  of 
atmosphere  because  you  now  and  then  find  a 
pump  from  which  the  air  has  been  exhausted, 
than  you  can  deny  the  universality  of  the  God 
consciousness  because  now  and  then  you  find 
an  atheist. 

97 


Hits  and  Misses 

Yes,  God  impinges  upon  us,  and  therefore 
we  are  conscious  of  Him.  We  have  an  idea  of 
God,  only  because  there  is  a  God  to  excite  it. 
We  could  no  more  have  an  idea  of  God  if  there 
were  no  God,  than  of  a  universe  if  one  did  not 
exist.  Even  the  hippogriffs  and  hobgoblins  of 
our  dreams  are  based  upon  realities.  There 
could  have  been  no  hippogriff  if  there  had  not 
been  a  horse,  an  eagle,  and  a  lion  out  of  which 
to  construct  it.  How  then  could  there  be  an 
idea  of  God  if  (so  to  speak)  there  had  not  been 
some  God  ''stuff"  out  of  which  to  make  it? 
Yes,  we  think  there  is  a  God,  because  there  is 
a  God.  We  have  really  discovered  Him,  and 
it  remains  for  us  only  to  clarify  the  conception 
which  we  now  have. 

The  thought  to  which  I  summon  you  this 
morning  is  this :  The  search  for  God,  or 
rather  the  clarification  of  the  vague  conscious- 
ness of  his  divine  presence  in  the  universe,  is 
the  grandest  achievement  of  history. 

The  greatest  glory  of  man  must  always  be  his 
ability  to  discover  the  unknown,  and  to  compre- 
hend the  uncomprehended.  If  I  were  an  artist 
and  wished  to  represent  the  very  essence  of 
man's  greatness,  I  would  carve  a  human  figure 
with  two  faces,  one  looking  eagerly  down  into 
the  earth  and  the  other  as  eagerly  up  into  the 

heavens,  to  discover  the  unknown. 

98 


The  Discovery  of  God 

The  search  after  truth,  the  discovery  of  the 
unknown  facts  of  the  universe,  and  the  clari- 
fication of  the  crude  conceptions  of  the  mind, 
have  been  the  eternal  passion  of  the  greatest  of 
the  sons  of  men.  And  in  these  explorations, 
what  courage,  what  devotion,  what  self-sacri- 
fice have  they  shown!  Will  you  have  ex- 
amples? Take  the  search  for  the  open  Polar 
Sea.  With  what  reckless  abandon  have  the 
Franklins,  the  Kanes,  the  Pearys,  the  Greelys, 
the  Nansens  and  the  Andrees  flung  their  lives 
away  or  placed  them  as  a  willing  offering  on 
the  altar. 

Take  the  search  for  the  other  unknown 
regions  of  the  earth.  The  names  of  countless 
heroes  who  lived  before  history,  have  been  con- 
signed to  oblivion;  but  the  courage,  the  dar- 
ing, the  self-immolation  of  the  Hudsons,  the 
Vasco  de  Gamas,  the  Ponce-de-Leons,  the 
Cabots,  and  of  the  immortal  Columbus  have 
adorned  the  story  of  human  life  with  a  lustre 
which  time  can  never  dim. 

Take  the  search  for  all  the  other  hidden 
secrets  of  the  world.  Begin  with  astronomy  and 
reflect  upon  the  passion  with  which  men  have 
spent  their  lives  in  all  the  centuries,  gazing  and 
gazing  and  gazing  into  the  infinities  above  them 
until  they  have  plundered  their  inmost  myste- 
ries.   Go  on  through  geology,  botany,  chemis- 

99 


Hits  and  Misses 

try,  biology,  psychology,  and  all  the  splendid 
galaxy  of  the  sciences,  and  everywhere  you  see 
a  countless  multitude  of  irrepressible,  inde- 
fatigable, invincible  men,  peeping  and  prying 
into  every  corner  of  the  tangible,  or  audible,  or 
visible  world.  Nothing  is  more  clear  than  the 
determination  of  these  men  to  ransack  the  very 
universe  itself.  They  will  turn  the  world  up- 
side down  and  inside  out.  Its  secrets  cannot 
hide  forever  from  these  prying  eyes.  The 
search  is  a  desperate  one.  We  must — we  will 
know!  To  be  frozen  in  icebergs,  to  be  ship- 
wrecked on  oceans,  to  be  lost  among  moun- 
tains, to  be  engulfed  in  volcanoes — all  these 
are  nothing,  if  only  we  may  drag  the  secrets 
of  the  universe  out  into  the  light. 

But  you  do  not  see  the  significance  of  all 
these  sublime  endeavors  until  you  realize  that 
consciously  or  unconsciously  they  have  all  been 
directed  to  a  single  end,  and  that  end  is  the 
discovery  of  God,  or  the  clarification  of  the 
imperfect  concept  of  Him.  For  this  is,  after 
all,  the  master  secret.  If  we  can  find  Him,  we 
have  found  all.  Not  every  investigator  has 
realized  this  fact,  or  consciously  pursued  this 
end.  Nor,  when  a  vessel  is  plowing  its  way 
across  the  sea,  are  all  the  members  of  its  crew 
consciously  seeking  the  harbor.  It  is  only  the 
captain  and  the  mate  perhaps  who  never  lose 

100 


The  Discovery  of  God 

sight  of  that  single  aim.  And  yet  the  entire 
crew,  from  the  stokers  who  feed  the  furnace 
and  the  engineers  who  hold  the  lever,  to  the 
cook  in  the  kitchen  and  the  middy  on  the  yard 
arm,  are  working  for  it  as  ardently  as  they. 

And,  to  my  mind,  the  multitudinous  efforts 
of  all  these  individual  explorers  who  are  inde- 
pendently (many  of  them  selfishly  or  aimlessly) 
hunting  for  these  mysterious  secrets,  become 
intelligible  and  sacred  only  because  they  are 
bearing  upon  a  single  point,  and  can  have  but 
a  single  result — ^the  discovery  of  God.  Their 
scattered  rays  are  being  slowly  focussed  as  in 
a  mighty  lens  upon  a  single  mystery — the 
nature  of  the  divine  Being. 

Looked  at  from  this  point  of  view  all  be- 
comes comprehensible,  and  the  sublimity  of 
the  scattered  and  divided  efforts  is  seen. 

The  figures  of  the  great  leaders  in  this 
search  (attended  by  their  innumerable  com- 
panions) rise  before  our  enraptured  vision. 
Buddha  meditating  upon  His  being  beneath 
the  sacred  trees  in  India,  Abraham  setting  his 
face  westward  to  find  His  person  near  the  sink- 
ing sun,  Moses  wandering  among  the  moun- 
tains and  beholding  His  Majesty  in  burning 
bushes,  David,  Elija,  Isaiah,  pursuing  the  ever- 
present,  ever-receding  vision;  Socrates  and 
Plato,  Cicero  and  Marcus  Aurelius  gazing  into 

lOI 


Hits  and  Misses 

the  profound  depths  of  the  human  spirit,  and, 
at  last,  the  humble  Carpenter  of  Nazareth,  his 
eye  purged  like  that  of  the  eagle,  beholding 
Him  with  undimmed  and  unclouded  vision  in 
every  lily  that  bloomed  and  every  bird  that 
sung  and  every  little  child  that  looked  trust- 
fully up  into  his  face. 

Sometimes  it  has  fared  hard  with  this  sub- 
lime discovery — this  ever-clarifying  concept. 
There  have  been  ages  when  it  has  been  eclipsed 
and  ages  in  which  it  was  almost  lost.  Atheism 
has  abolished  it;  dualism  has  divided  it; 
pantheism  has  enveloped  it  in  fogs ;  polytheism 
has  trampled  it  under  its  swine-like  feet,  and 
agnosticism  (last  and  deadliest  of  all  its  foes) 
has  dismissed  it  with  its  calm,  superior  smile. 

But  still  the  idea  abides.  Still  the  vision 
endures.  Still  human  hearts  are  true  to  it, 
and  would  even  dare  to  die  for  it,  while  every 
year  its  imperfections  are  eliminated  and  hu- 
manity gains  a  truer  knowledge  of  its  God. 
Once,  I  have  said,  it  existed  in  complete  perfec- 
tion in  the  soul  of  the  divine  man.  His  mind 
contained  it,  as  the  drop  of  dew  contains  the 
sun.  It  was  a  perfect  reflection,  in  the  pure 
depths  of  that  beautiful,  undistorted  spirit. 

And  we  may  correct  our  own  distorted  vis- 
ion by  that  of  Christ's.  His  conception  has 
become  the  standard  of  the  world.     The  eye 

I02 


The  Discovery  of  God 

which  cannot  gaze  at  the  Sun  itself  without 
being  blinded,  gazes  freely  at  its  reflection  in 
the  drop  of  dew.     We  see  our  God  in  Christ. 
Once  more  we  listen  to  the  old  interrogation 
uttered  in  the  minor  tone  of  sadness,  "Canst 
thou  by  searching  find  out  God?"     And  listen- 
ing here  this  holy  Sabbath  morn  we  catch  the 
joyous  answer  roUing  round  the  world:    We 
can! — we  have!     God  is  a  spirit,  infinite,  eter- 
nal and  unchangeable  in  His  being,  wisdom, 
power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness  and  truth. 
He  is  our  Father.     The  age-long  efforts  of  the 
myriads  of  men  who  have  looked  and  listened 
have  been  successful.     Man  has  formed  a  true 
concept  (true  as  far  as  it  goes)  of  the  universe 
in  which  he  lives,  and  true  as  far  as  it  goes  of 
the  spirit  who  created  it.     Alleluja!     Amen! 
We  cannot  find  him  out  to  perfection ;  but  the 
vision  which  we  have  caught  from  Jesus  Christ 
is  genuine.     It  is  correct  in  outline.     It  is  in- 
complete, but  it  is  not  untrue. 

There  is  a  certain  solemnity  in  this  thought. 
It  fills  the  mind  with  awe  to  think  that  starting 
in  absolute  ignorance  (like  that  of  a  new-born 
infant)  of  this  infinite  universe,  humanity  by 
the  aid  of  its  prophets,  its  sages,  and  its  divine 
Teacher,  have  risen  to  these  august  conceptions. 
What  a  treasure  is  this  gift  which  humanity 
lays  at  our  feet  this  morning.     Here,  in  this 

103 


Hits  and  Misses 

''gospel"  conception  of  a  loving  heavenly 
Father,  is  the  result  of  the  toil  and  sacri- 
fice of  billions  of  lives.  Suppose  that  these 
results  should  be  obliterated^  and  we  had 
to  begin  again!  Suppose  that  you  had  noth- 
ing of  the  fruits  of  all  this  search  of  an- 
guished, eager  hearts  to  help  you  on  your 
painful  way,  and  that  we  had  to  start  de  novo 
with  that  first  vague  consciousness  which 
stirred  in  the  bosom  of  those  primitive  savages 
who  wakened  slowly  from  animalism  to  hu- 
manity as  they  looked  up  from  the  earth  be- 
neath their  feet  to  the  stars  above  their  heads. 

And  what  is  your  spiritual  attitude,  my 
friend,  toward  this  idea  of  God  which  has  been 
thus  distilled  from  the  prayers,  the  sighs,  the 
tears  and  raptures  of  the  ages  ?  Have  you  re- 
ceived it?  Have  you  appropriated  it?  Does 
the  beatific  vision  float  before  your  inward  eye? 
Or  have  you  spurned  the  gift  divine? 

To  me  there  is  no  defect  in  the  soul  more 
radical  and  more  despicable  than  ingratitude 
and  contempt  for  the  efforts  of  those  who  have 
gone  before  us,  to  solve  the  problems  and  re- 
move the  obstacles  of  life.  The  fruits  of  these 
ages  of  labor  and  devotion  possess  to  my  mind 
an  indescribable  sacredness.  We  ought  never 
to  forget  that  all  the  treasures  of  the  modern 
world   are  the  products   of  the  consolidated 

104 


The  Discovery  of  God 

efforts  of  the  entire  human  race,  the  countless 
myriads  of  men  and  women  who  have  struggled 
with  the  forces  of  nature  and  the  foes  of  ex- 
istence. He  who  rejects  or  despises  these  gifts 
seems  to  me  to  be  guilty  of  a  certain  sacrilege. 

But  no  one  despises  and  rejects  the  fruits  of 
these  labors  in  the  world  of  useful  inventions. 
With  what  eagerness  you  appropriate  the  en- 
gines, instruments  and  mechanisms  which  these 
myriads  of  inventors  have  perfected  for  your 
use. 

It  is  so  in  the  world  of  art.  The  products  of 
their  struggles  to  conceive  and  materialize  "the 
beautiful"  possess  a  sacredness  which  every 
thoughtful  mind  respects.  The  paintings,  the 
statues,  the  palaces,  the  cathedrals  which  have 
been  slowly  and  painfully  evolved  out  of  all 
these  age-long  yearnings  and  strivings  of  the 
ceaseless  generations  of  men,  awaken  within 
our  bosoms  both  wonder  and  gratitude. 

It  is  so  in  the  domain  of  literature.  The 
great  books  of  the  ages  are  the  hives  in  which 
the  honeyed  thought  of  billions  of  men  are 
stored !  It  takes  whole  beds  of  roses  to  make 
a  single  drop  of  attar,  whole  groves  of  cinchona 
leaves  to  make  a  vial  of  quinine,  whole  fields  of 
clover  to  make  a  cup  of  honey,  and  whole  gen- 
erations of  men  to  make  a  Kalavalla,  Niebel- 
ungenlied,  Iliad,  Paradise  Lost,  Inferno.  These 


Hits  and  Misses 

books — the  sacred  vials  which  contain  these 
precious  distillations — we  preserve  as  we  pre- 
serve the  apples  of  our  eyes. 

It  is  so  with  the  great  ethical  ideas,  and  tht^ 
great  social  conceptions  of  the  race.  What 
multitudes  on  multitudes  of  suffering,  strug- 
gling men  gave  up  their  lives  to  work  out  their 
problems.  And  liberty,  for  example,  sacred 
in  itself,  becomes  holier  a  thousand  times  be- 
cause of  the  martyrs  and  heroes,  the  good,  the 
great,  the  generous,  the  true,  who  gave  their 
lives  to  demonstrate  and  secure  for  us  this  holy 
gift. 

And  now,  it  seems  to  me,  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  God,  the  conception  as  it  exists,  not 
in  the  minds  of  zealots  and  bigots,  but  in  the 
minds  and  books  of  the  greatest,  noblest  advo- 
cates, is  the  most  sacred  drop  of  knowledge  that 
has  been  distilled  from  all  the  ages.  Every 
race  that  has  ever  lived,  every  great  thinker 
that  has  ever  pondered  on  the  secrets  of  life, 
has  contributed  something,  perhaps,  to  the  sub- 
lime conception  of  God. 

For  one,  I  could  no  more  repudiate  it  than 
I  could  repudiate  the  government  established 
by  my  fathers,  or  the  conception  of  the  universe 
elaborated  by  the  sages.  Nay,  I  could  let  all 
these  and  others  go,  before  I  could  part  with  if. 
I  cling  to  it.     I  adore  it.     I  place  it  above  all 

1 06 


The  Discovery  of  God 

price.  It  is  the  pearl  for  which  I  would 
barter  every  other  treasure.  Deprive  me  of 
this,  and  I  have  nothing ;  leave  it  with  me,  and 
I  have  all. 

Let  us  cherish  it  in  our  heart  of  hearts.  Per- 
haps in  that  sacred  repository,  where  it  has 
been  purified  by  being  brooded  over,  it  will 
undergo  still  further  clarification,  and  we  shall 
be  able  to  transmit  to  those  who  follow  us 
amidst  the  mysteries  of  life  a  God-concept 
still  more  sublime  and  clear  than  we  ourselves 
received  from  those  who  preceded  us. 


107 


Hope,  the  Practical  Equivalent  of 
Knowledge 


'The  wish,  that  of  the  living  whole 
No  life  may  fail  beyond  the  grave — 
Derives  it  not  from  what  we  have 

The  likest  God  within  the  soul? 

'Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 
That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams! 
So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems 

So  careless  of  the  single  life; 

'That  I,  considering  everywhere 
Her  secret  meaning  in  her  deeds. 
And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds 

She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear, 

'I  falter  where  I  firmly  trod 

And  falling  with  my  weight  of  cares 
Upon  the  great  world's  altar  stairs 

That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God, 

'I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  All, 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope." 

— In  Memoriam — LIV. 


Hope  thou  in  God. — Ps.  xlii,  ii. 

There  are  seven  states  of  mind  so  closely 
juxtaposed  that  they  may  not  inappropriately 
be  called  the  gamut  of  the  soul,  or  perhaps  its 
"scala  sancta;'  its  holy  staircase.  They  are: 
Knowledge,  belief,  faith,  hope,  doubt,  disbe- 
lief, despair. 

Beginning  at  the  highest  step  of  this  sacred 
stairway,  it  is  possible  to  descend  into  deepest 
hell.  Beginning  at  the  lowest,  to  ascend  into 
highest  heaven. 

Knowledge  is  the  clear  and  certain  appre- 
hension of  truth ;  the  restful  assurance  arising 
from  proper  evidence  that  a  mental  impression 
agrees  with  the  reality  of  an  object. 

Belief  is  the  acceptance  of  anything  on 
grounds  which,  while  they  render  it  probable, 
do  not  compel  its  admission. 

Faith,  in  the  sense  now  meant,  is  the  assent 
of  the  mind  to  the  testimony  of  God's  chosen 
witnesses  of  truth,  to  the  facts  of  the  spiritual 
realm  of  being. 

Hope  is  desire  accompanied  by  expectation, 


III 


Hits  and  Misses 

the  confidence  that  the  thing  looked  forward  to 
will  happen. 

Doubt  is  the  indecision  of  the  mind  between 
views  which  are,  or  seem  to  be,  contradictory. 

Disbelief  is  a  positive  and  clear  conviction 
that  a  statement  does  not  correspond  with  a 
fact. 

Despair  is  the  darkness  and  bitterness  which 
overwhelms  the  mind  when  all  hope  and  faith 
have  disappeared. 

You  will  observe  that  hope  stands  in  the  mid- 
dle of  this  gamut,  of  this  scala  sancta.  Below 
it  are  doubt,  disbelief,  despair ;  above  it,  faith, 
belief,  knowledge.  Hope  is  thus  a  sort  of  pivot 
of  the  soul's  life.  Upon  hope  as  upon  a  wide 
platform  in  this  stairway,  I  believe  that  any 
man,  whatever  his  spiritual  difficulties,  may 
pause  in  his  swift  descent  toward  darkness  and 
begin  his  upward  climb  toward  light,  and  I 
ask  you  to  consider  the  reasonableness  of  this 
assertion. 

What  is  it  that  makes  life  hard  and  unsatis- 
factory to  people  of  spiritual  natures  and  noble 
aspirations  ?  I  answer,  "uncertainty  as  to  the 
being  and  nature  of  God."  If  such  people 
could  absolutely  know  that  God  lives  and  loves, 
or  even  if  they  could  believe  it,  or  even  if  they 
had  faith  in  it,  they  could  bear  the  disappoint- 
ments and  endure  the  trials  of  life  with  forti- 

112 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

tude.  Absolute  and  verifiable  knowledge  of 
the  being  and  nature  of  God  would  simply 
revolutionize  life.  If,  to-morrow  morning,  a 
new  faculty  could  be  developed  in  the  mind, 
or  a  new  organ  in  the  body,  by  which  we  should 
gain  as  clear  a  knowledge  of  God  as  we  have 
of  the  sun,  the  metamorphosis  of  all  institutions 
and  characters  would  be  catastrophic.  Even  if 
we  could  only  have  belief  instead  of  knowledge, 
or  faith  instead  of  belief,  the  transformation 
would  be  stupendous  and  immeasurable. 

But  widespread  as  the  belief  in  God  has  been, 
it  has  lacked  that  definiteness  and  assurance 
that  could  work  these  catastrophic  changes,  and 
in  our  day  multitudes  of  people  have  ceased  to 
possess  any  kind  of  assurance  whatever  as  to 
his  existence  or  character.  Just  as  the  frost 
has  been  pulled  out  of  snow  by  a  summer  sun, 
just  as  fragrance  has  been  extracted  from  fad- 
ing flowers  by  decay,  confidence,  trust,  assur- 
ances of  God  have  been  dissolved  in  the  hearts 
of  multitudes  of  our  fellow  men  by  the  dis- 
coveries and  the  speculations  of  modern  science 
and  of  modern  criticism. 

Now,  what  message  has  the  Christian  min- 
istry for  these  people?  They  constitute  an 
enormous  and  increasing  class,  and  if  we  have 
no  word  of  comfort  or  enlightenment  for  them, 


"3 


Hits  and  Misses 

we  might  almost  as  well  cease  to  proclaim  our 
call  to  preach  a  "universal"  gospel. 

For  one,  I  believe  I  have  a  message  for 
them.  It  is  an  old  tradition  that  a  bullet 
dipped  in  the  blood  of  the  hunter  never  misses 
its  mark.  Well,  this  message  has  been  dipped 
in  mine.  I  know  such  people's  needs  because 
I  have  suffered  them.  I  feel  toward  them  like 
the  Ancient  Mariner — 

The  moment  that  his  face  I  see, 
I  know  the  man  that  must  hear  me ! 

This  is  my  message:  If  you  cannot  have 
knowledge  of  God,  if  you  cannot  secure  belief, 
if  you  cannot  exercise  faith,  you  can  accomplish 
the  main  end  by  hope!  Any  man  can  hope. 
Hope  THOU  in  God !  I  say  that  any  man  can 
hope  in  God,  and  this  proposition  is  so  sweep- 
ing and  so  important  that  we  must  bend  the 
whole  force  of  our  critical  analysis  upon  it. 

What  is  hope?  Hope  is  that  faculty  or 
capacity  of  the  soul  by  which  it  believes  in  the 
existence  of  what  it  thinks  ought  to  be,  and 
expects  what  it  considers  desirable.  Hope  is 
an  original  element  in  the  mind  of  man.  It  is 
a  basal  quality  of  spirit.  It  is  as  much  an 
instinct  as  the  love  of  life.  Hope  is  as  much 
a  mode  of  soul  as  heat  is  a  mode  of  motion. 
It  is  a  power  without  which  existence  would 
become  unendurable,  and  so  impossible.     The 

114 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

value  of  this  function  of  the  soul  in  life  trans- 
cends the  possibility  of  exaggeration.  Its  mis- 
sion is  as  much  underestimated  as  its  possibili- 
ties are  unrealized. 

I  have  said  that  hope  was  instinctive;  and 
the  significance  of  this  fact  must  be  brought  to 
light.  I  mean  that  it  is  natural  for  man  to 
hope.  Hope  springs  out  of  the  soul  just  as 
water  springs  out  of  a  fountain,  or  light  out 
of  a  candle,  or  perfume  out  of  a  flower.  It  is 
not  the  result  of  experience.  It  is  not  depend- 
ant upon  proof  or  even  probability.  It  pos- 
sesses the  power  of  spontaneous  origination.  It 
is  self-animated.  It  is  self-sustained.  It  can 
be  developed,  but  it  cannot  be  created.  Little 
children  do  not  have  to  be  taught  to  hope,  any 
more  than  they  have  to  be  taught  to  drink  their 
mothers'  milk  or  breathe  the  air  of  heaven. 
They  hope  because  they  cannot  help  hoping-. 
Whatever  they  think  desirable,  they  expect, 
and  they  do  so  by  an  original  instinct  and 
necessity  of  their  being.  Nothing  on  earth  is 
more  divinely  beautiful  than  the  bubbling  of 
these  hopes  from  the  heart  of  an  inexperienced, 
happy,  care-free  child — not  even  the  gushing 
of  water  from  a  fountain,  nor  the  opening  of 
a  rose  from  a  bud,  nor  the  rising  of  a  star  above 
the  horizon.  And  if  the  origin  of  hope  is 
divinely    beautiful,    its    tenacious    persistence 

115 


Hits  and  Misses 

through  life  is  divinely  wonderful.  Nothing  is 
so  astonishing  as  the  indestructibility  of  hope. 
How  can  it  survive  the  innumerable  disappoint- 
ments of  hfe?  How  can  it  be  explained  that 
you,  that  I,  we  who  have  seen  ten  thousand 
hopes  decay,  should  still  continue  to  expect 
"the  desirable"?  That  which  we  anticipate 
and  strive  for,  never  seems  to  come.  It  is 
always  the  unexpected  which  happens.  And 
yet  we  hope!  Hope  is  the  last  spark  to  die  in 
the  cooling  embers  of  the  soul.  Only  the  sui- 
cide is  hopeless!  When  that  moment  arrives 
in  which  the  spirit  says,  "I  have  no  further 
hope,"  we  expect  a  tragedy,  for  life  is  insup- 
portable when  hope  is  gone.  But  while  life 
lasts,  hope  burns  in  every  normal  breast — a 
self-sustained  fire — and  the  mystery  of  the  sun, 
apparently  supplying  its  own  fuel  and  creating 
its  own  energy,  is  no  greater  than  that  of  an 
old  man's  soul  generating  the  light  of  hope  out 
of  the  black  fuel  of  defeat  and  disappointment. 
It  is,  in  fact,  this  independence  of  hope  for 
its  existence  upon  proof  or  evidence,  or  expe- 
rience, that  constitutes  its  most  mysterious 
beauty.  Those  great  and  invincible  spirits  in 
every  age,  who  have  dominated  their  genera- 
tion, and  who  have  triumphed  over  every 
obstacle,  never  asked  for  a  foundation  for  their 
hopes  in  experience  or  in  reason.     Hope  sprang 

ii6 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

from  an  inward  source,  and  was  poised  upon 
its  own  self,  like  a  sun  in  the  heavens.  They 
hoped,  not  because  they  could  demonstrate,  but 
could  demonstrate  because  they  hoped.  The 
bare  feeling  within  their  souls  that  events  were 
desirable,  justified  anticipation  of  their  realiza- 
tion. They  expected  them,  therefore  they 
arrived.  Things  ought  to  be,  and  therefore 
they  must  be. 

You  may  think  this  irrational ;  but  it  is  fact, 
that  what  one  might  almost  call  blind  hope,  has 
led  to  a  thousand  times  the  triumphs  of  a  cal- 
culated wisdom.  And  it  is  not  unique  in  this. 
The  mightiest  potencies  within  us  are  unrea- 
sonable. Love  is  blind;  faith  is  blind;  hope  is 
blind.  But  it  is  these  sightless  eyes  alone  that 
lead  us  safely  to  our  journey's  end!  Experi- 
ence may  help  a  wild  duck  to  find  a  berry  under 
a  leaf  in  a  pond,  but  it  is  instinct  that  guides  it 
from  Hudson's  Bay  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 
Experience,  logic,  argument,  calculation,  may 
help  you  through  to-day;  but  nothing  on  earth 
can  bear  you  over  the  pathless  journey  of  three- 
score years  and  ten  but  hope.  Experience,  logic, 
argument,  calculation,  have  their  mission,  but  it 
is  not  the  mission  of  hope.  Its  mission,  be- 
lieve me,  is  infinitely  nobler.  And  you  may 
discover  that  this  is  so  from  the  fact  that  the 
grandest  moments  of  your  own  life  have  been 

117 


Hits  and  Misses 

those  of  the  largest  hope.  Was  it  when  your 
soul  was  cast  down  and  disquieted  within  you 
that  you  knew  yourself  to  be  at  your  best  ?  No, 
a  thousand  times !  The  sun  of  life  reaches  its 
zenith  at  the  moment  when  it  cherishes  the 
most  unquestioning  expectation  that  its  plans 
shall  all  be  realized. 

And  it  will  not  do  for  you  to  try  to  throw  a 
cloud  over  the  glory  of  this  sublime  capacity 
of  the  soul  by  pointing  out  its  apparent  untrust- 
worthiness.  You  affirm  that  it  has  deceived 
you,  misled  you,  made  you  chase  the  feet  of 
ever-receding  rainbows.  Yes,  but  it  has  led 
you  on!  When  you  have  hoped,  you  have 
gone  forward;  when  you  have  despaired, 
backward.  And  to-day,  now,  you  have  cour- 
age to  fight,  just  in  proportion  as  you  have 
hope  in  your  heart.  If  I  could  to-day  rekindle 
the  fires  of  hope  in  the  hearts  of  some  of  you 
I  could  add  years  to  your  life,  give  you  "beauty 
for  ashes,  the  oil  of  joy  for  mourning,  and  the 
garment  of  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness." 
Oh,  cherish  hope!  You  can  never  tell  when 
the  long  road  is  going  to  have  its  turning. 
Remember  upon  how  slight  a  circumstance  (as 
upon  a  little  pivot)  the  whole  world  has  some- 
times spun  around.  Perhaps  the  next  tooth  in 
the  great  wheel  of  time  to  slip  into  a  notch, 
will  set  in  operation  a  train  of  circumstances 

ii8 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

loaded  with  blessings  for  you.     Never  say  die! 

Never  give  up  the  ship!     While  there  is  Hfe, 

there  is  hope.     Hope  on !     Hope  ever !     Hope 

against  hope ! 

"I  laugh,  for  hope  is  happiness  with  me. 
If  my  bark  sinks— 'tis  to  a  happier  sea." 

said  William  Ellery  Channing.  And  to  all 
great  souls,  the  lesser  hope  ahvays  sinks  into  the 
larger. 

Now,  would  it  not  be  strange  if  this  marvel- 
ous facuhy  of  the  soul  which  has  such  a  mis- 
sion in  the  realm  of  time  and  sense  had  none 
whatever  in  that  spiritual  realm  of  being  which 
the  generations  of  men  have  darkly  dreamed  of 
ever  since  humanity  came  to  its  consciousness? 
Believe  me  that  it  has,  that  it  is  the  key  to  that 
closed  door. 

Suppose  you  have  no  knowledge  of  that 
realm !  Suppose  you  do  not  even  believe  in  it. 
Suppose  you  have  lost  your  faith  in  it.  Still 
you  can  cherish  hope. 

You  have  afflicted  yourself  with  the  thought 
that  you  cannot  prove  the  existence  of  God 
and  the  immortality  of  the  soul !  Well,  you  do 
not  need  to  prove  things  in  order  to  hope  in 
them.  If  you  could  prove  them,  you  could 
not  hope  for  them  any  more  than  you  could 
anticipate  the  past,  or  look  forward  to  the 
pleasure  of  eating  a  pudding  which  you  de- 

119 


Hits  and  Misses 

voured  yesterday.  "Hope  that  is  seen  is  not 
hope!  For  what  a  man  seeth,  why  doth  he 
yet  hope  for?  We  hope  for  that  we  see  not, 
and  in  patience  WAIT  for  it." 

I  am  still  guilty  of  a  thousand  mental  incon- 
sistencies and  absurdities,  but  I  have  at  least 
been  emancipated  from  that  most  colossal  one 
of  all,  that  leads  men  to  think  they  cannot  take 
any  comfort  in  the  thought  of  God  until  they 
have  DEMONSTRATED  his  existence!  We  do 
not  need  to  be  certain  that  there  is  a  God  be- 
fore we  can  be  blessed  and  comforted.  All  we 
need  is  the  privilege  of  hoping  that  there  is  a 
God,  of  feeling  confident  that  that  which  we 
so  earnestly  desire  is  really  true,  and  I  now  de- 
clare that  nothing  in  the  world  but  absolute 
p7'oof  that  there  is  no  God  to  hope  in,  could  ren- 
der hope  irrational.  And  where  in  the  name 
of  heaven  is  that  proof  to  be  found?  What 
atheist  has  ever  discovered  it?  It  is  impossible 
to  prove  that  there  is  no  God.  You  cannot 
prove  a  universal  negative.  The  impossibility 
of  proving  that  there  was  no  form  of  life  more 
minute  than  the  microscope  has  yet  discovered, 
and  no  star  beyond  the  last  one  which  the  tele- 
scope has  revealed,  is  mere  child's  play  com- 
pared with  the  effort  to  prove  that  there  is  no 
God.     In  order  to  prove  that  there  is  no  God 

you  would  have  to  penetrate  every  corner  of 

1 20 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

an  infinite  universe.  But  if  it  cannot  be 
proven  that  there  is  no  God,  what  prevents  you 
from  hoping  that  there  isf 

The  moment  that  I  clearly  perceived  that 
the  non-existence  of  God  could  not  be  demon- 
strated my  mind  leaped  out  toward  Him  with 
a  bound.  *'Let  me  see  anything  prevent  me 
from  hoping  now !" 

All  my  soul  wanted  was  its  opportunity. 
Hope  ought  never  to  demand  anything  more 
than  the  removal  of  the  impossibility  of  its 
exercise.  Nothing  can  be  more  irrational  than 
for  one  who  has  the  power  of  hope,  to  demand 
proof  and  demonstration.  It  is  like  a  falcon 
that  has  wings,  demanding  that  it  should  be 
carried  upon  a  hunter's  arm,  like  a  package 
of  merchandise.  Wings  were  made  to  traverse 
space  with,  and  hope  was  made  to  cross  un- 
bridged  chasms  with. 

You  are  wrong,  you  are  irrational  In  your 
craving  for  demonstration  of  the  being  of 
God,  in  your  wailing  demand  for  CER- 
TAINTY. You  are  wrong,  because  you 
do  not  need  certainties.  You  have  been  en- 
dowed with  faculties  which  enable  you  to 
dispense  with  certainties.  You  do  not  (or 
at  least  the  noblest  and  best  of  men  do 
not)  demand  certainties  in  practical  life,  and 
could  not  have  them  if  you  did.     The  merchant 

121 


Hits  and  Misses 

who  loads  his  wares  upon  the  deck  of  a  vessel 
has  no  certainty  that  it  w411  reach  the  distant 
wharf.  The  parents  who  sacrifice  their  very 
lives  to  educate  their  children  have  no  certainty 
that  they  will  repay  those  efforts.  The  heroes 
who  consecrate  their  lives  to  some  great  cause 
have  no  certainty  that  it  will  reach  a  prosperous 
issue.  They  only  ask  that  no  demonstrable  im- 
possibility lies  in  their  way,  and  then  they  put 
the  shoulder  of  hope  to  the  wheel.  All  Colum- 
bus asked  was  to  know  whether  anybody  could 
demonstrate  that  India  did  not  lie  to  westward. 
He  only  asked  that  he  might  have  the  privilege 
of  hope,  and  then  pointed  the  prow  of  his  vessel 
out  upon  an  unknown  sea. 

Such  is  the  sublime  mission  and  power  of 
hope,  and  if  there  were  no  unknown  and  uncer- 
tain elements  in  life,  hope  would  be  as  useless 
to  the  soul  as  the  vermiform  appendage  or 
any  other  "vestigial  remain"  have  become  to  the 
body. 

And  I  say  unhesitatingly  that  a  man  who 
asks  for  a  demonstration  of  the  being  of  God 
has  gone  too  far.  He  does  not  need  certain- 
ties. Let  him  but  exercise  the  power  of  hope, 
and  he  will  attain  the  same  ends  he  seeks 
through  knowledge.  It  is  possible  (and  has 
been  shown  to  be,  ten  thousand  billion  times,) 
that  men  could  live  as  if  they  saw  God  when 

122 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

they  did  not,  as  if  they  could  prove  his  exist- 
ence when  they  could  not — just  hy  the  exercise 
of  hope,  and  because  this  is  possible  it  is  asking 
too  much  to  ask  for  more.  The  author  of  this 
psalm  did  not.  He  stood  squarely  upon  this 
principle  which  I  have  enunciated.  He  said 
to  his  soul,  "You  feel  the  need  of  God,  then 
hope  in  God ;  no  one  can  say  you  nay.  I  can- 
not offer  you  demonstration,  certainty ;  but  you 
can,  hope!"'' 

And  now,  if  this  be  true,  we  are  ready  for 
another  thought.  It  does  not  follow  that  be- 
cause hope  is  independent  of  certainty  that  it 
may  not  be  greatly  strengthened  and  sup- 
ported by  probability.  It  can !  Whenever  God 
Almighty  wishes  a  fire  to  burn.  He  furnishes 
it  with  fuel,  and  He  who  has  furnished  fuel 
for  every  other  fire  has  filled  the  universe  with 
the  kindling  wood  of  hope ! 

The  evidences  of  the  existence  of  God  may 
not  amount,  even  when  taken  in  all  their  mar- 
velous fullness,  to  a  demonstration;  but  their 
accumulated  evidence  excites  and  inflames  hope 
to  the  burning  point. 

Let  a  man  for  once  and  all  rid  himself  of  the 
demand  for  absolute  demonstration  in  the  evi- 
dence for  the  being  of  God,  and  the  fullness  of 
that  evidence  to  excite  a  presumption,  and  cre- 


J23 


Hits  and  Misses 

ate  a  probability  that  he  exists,  assumes  its  full 
proportions. 

If  you  want  to  believe  in  God,  if  you  are 
determined  to  hope  there  is  a  God,  cast  your 
mind  over  that  array  of  intimations  of  his  being 
which  the  generations  of  seekers  after 
God  have  marshaled  upon  the  field  of  thought. 

It  sustains  and  inflames  hope  to  remember 
that  in  almost  all  ages  and  in  almost  all  cir- 
cumstances the  minds  of  all  classes  and  condi- 
tions of  men  have  been  feeling  after  God  if 
happily  they  might  find  him.  It  affects  me  to 
see  men  thus  reaching  up  and  groping  after 
something,  as  I  think  it  would  to  see  all  plants 
and  trees  reaching  up  and  groping  after  some- 
thing, even  if  I  had  never  seen  the  sun.  There 
must  be  something  drawing  them,  inviting 
them,  exciting  them,  uplifting  them,  or  they 
would  not  always  be  looking  up  and  reaching 
out  and  hungering  for  that  something ! 

It  sustains  and  inflamaCs  hope  to  observe  the 
order,  the  beauty,  the  harmony,  and  the  appar- 
ent adaptation  of  means  to  end  in  every  nook 
and  cranny  of  this  universe  into  which  our  eye 
can  penetrate.  The  mechanics  of  this  siderial 
system  are  indeed  celestial.  Our  minds  may  be 
disturbed  and  upset  in  their  reflections  for  a 
little  while  by  new  and  startling  theories  of 
science,  but  sooner  or  later,  as  we  gaze  upon 

124 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

this  august  and  awful  piece  of  mechanism,  we 
can  no  more  help  thinking  that  a  mind  produced 
it  than  when  gazing  at  a  Corliss  engine. 

It  sustains  and  inflames  hope  to  behold 
the  stupenduous  panorama  of  life  unfold- 
ing itself  according  to  fixed  and  immut- 
able principles,  and  climbing  up  from  low- 
est forms  to  highest,  from  animal  to  hu- 
man, from  material  to  spiritual.  We  are 
confounded  over  and  over  again  by  the  catas- 
trophies  which  befall  this  upward  striving  of 
the  current  of  life,  by  the  disasters,  the  strug- 
gles, the  cruelties,  the  groanings  that  cannot 
be  uttered  nor  comprehended;  but  sooner  or 
later  there  steals  upon  us  a  solemn  conscious- 
ness that  over  it  all  there  broods  an  eternal  and 
an  infinite  spirit. 

It  sustains  and  inflames  hope  to  see  how 
this  idea  of  God  has  been  clarified  as  the  ages 
pass,  in  the  souls  of  the  seers,  the  prophets, 
and  the  sages.  Sooner  or  later  we  are  com- 
pelled to  see  existence  through  the  eyes  of  the 
world's  "great  men."  It  is  an  irreversible  law 
of  our  being,  that  the  vague  emotions  of  mil- 
lions of  common  men  crystallize  finally  into  the 
clear  consciousness  of  the  uncommon  man. 
The  sage  pronounces  the  word  which  trembles 
inarticulately  upon  the  lips  of  the  masses.  Re- 
ject it  as  we  will,  their  testimony  prevails  at 

125 


Hits^and  Misses 

last.  And,  to-day,  we  listen  to  them  once 
again  while  they  speak  to  us  with  sublime 
authority.  Out  of  the  life  of  Abraham,  of 
Moses,  of  David,  of  Elijah,  of  Isaiah,  issues 
the  sublime  assurance  that  their  souls  have 
attained  a  clear  and  satisfying  vision.  And  like 
a  seraph  chanting  from  some  solemn  peak  of 
heaven,  high  above  earth's  jarring  and  discord- 
ant sounds,  the  voice  of  the  Divine  Man  comes 
floating  down  the  ages,  "God  is  a  spirit,  and 
they  that  worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth !" 

Brethren,  it  is  no  wonder  that  when  the  soul 
of  man,  asserting  its  divine  prerogative  of 
hopCj  sets  before  itself  the  conception  of  an 
infinite  and  eternal  spirit  of  love  and  power  and 
wisdom,  and  excites  itself  by  such  kindlings  as 
these,  that  it  bursts  into  a  flame  of  rapture  like 
that  of  Paul  when  he  exclaimed,  "For  I  am 
persuaded  that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor 
angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers,  nor 
things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able 
to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is 
in  Christ  Jesus,  our  Lord!"  Nor  like  that  of 
John,  when  he  heard,  as  it  were,  the  voices  of  a 
great  multitude,  as  if  it  were  the  voice  of  many 
waters  and  of  mighty  thunderings,  saying, 
"Alleluia ;  for  the  Lord  God  omnipotent  reign- 

126 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

eth" — for  these  evidences  so  sustain  and  glorify 
hope  that  it  becomes  transfigured  into  faith, 
and  faith  is  transfigured  into  beHef,  and  belief 
is  transfigured  into  the  full  equivalent  of  knowl- 
edge. It  is  this  state  of  mind  which  is  called, 
m  the  Scriptures,  ''the  full  assurance  of  hope." 
It  is  not  knowledge;  but  to  all  practical  pur- 
poses, it  is  the  same  as  knowledge.  Men  come 
to  live,  to  act,  to  die,  as  if  they  knew  !  Like 
Moses,  they  endure  as  if  they  saw  the  invisible. 
And  what  more  do  you  need  or  can  you  rightly 
ask  than  a  confidence  that  will  really  support 
you  in  all  your  earthly  trials?  If  you  have  a 
genuine  trust  in  something  which  is  the  full 
equivalent  of  knowledge,  if  it  leads  you  to  be- 
lieve even  though  doubt  is  theoretically  possible, 
if  it  leads  you  to  act  as  if  the  issues  of  conduct 
were  certain,  although  they  have  not  been 
revealed  in  advance,  is  it  not  enough  ? 

If  you  can  come  to  have  so  deep  and  abiding 
and  unquenchable  hope  m  God  that  you  can 
bear  suffering  in  the  full  assurance  that  chas- 
tisement is  the  measure  of  love;  if  you  can 
resist  temptation  in  the  full  assurance  that 
heaven  will  bring  your  spirit  ten  thousand  com- 
pensation for  all  the  fleeting  joys  you  here  deny 
your  flesh;  if  you  can  look  upon  the  dead 
bodies  of  your  loved  ones  in  full  assurance  that 
you  shall  meet  their  spirits  in  the  other  world ; 

127 


Hits  and  Misses 

if  you  can  regard  your  own  sins  in  the  full 
assurance  that  God  has  pardoned  them  in  the 
love  of  Christ — can  certainty  make  you  any 
happier  or  safer? 

There  are  multitudes  of  people  who  arrive 
at  this  full  assurance  of  faith.  I  do  not  say 
that  it  is  not  knowledge,  when  it  reaches  this 
point.  I  think  it  is.  I  believe  (and  you  have 
heard  me  say  so  too  often  to  doubt  it)  that  the 
soul  has  a  direct  and  intuitive  knowledge  of 
God.  But  it  is  not  what  is  known  as  verifiable 
knowledge  in  the  present  stage  of  thought. 
But  whether  it  be  knowledge  or  not,  it  is  its 
practical  equivalent.  Hope  is  the  practical 
equivalent  of  knowledge,  and  what  we  need  is 
the  full  exposition  of  this  fact.  We  have  been 
led  to  think  that  Christian  faith  somehow  or 
other  became  transmuted  into  knowledge — 
which  is  impossible.  Faith  is  not  knowledge; 
it  is,  at  best,  hope.  But  hope  is  the  practical 
equivalent  of  knowledge. 

We  have  reached  the  conclusion  of  our 
meditation,  but  I  must  add  a  few  words  of 
encouragement  and  inspiration. 

Hope  is  capable  of  cultivation  and  enlarge- 
ment. Hope  is  an  original  capacity  of  the  soul, 
and  probably  no  more  easily  destroyed  than 
memory,  imagination  or  reason.  We  neglect 
its  culture.     We  permit  it  to  decline.     It  is 

128 


Hope,  the  Equivalent  of  Knowledge 

so  much  easier  to  doubt  than  to  hope,  as  it 
is  so  much  easier  to  loaf  than  to  labor,  to  dream 
than  to  think,  to  forget  than  to  remember. 
But  to-day  I  say  to  you  with  all  the  confidence 
with  which  a  father  says  to  his  son,  "you  can 
be  good  if  you  will" — ''you  can  hope  if  you 
will."  "Hope  thou  in  God."  If  you  ask  me 
how  you  can  hope  when  hope  seems  dead,  I  can- 
not tell.  But  neither  can  I  tell  you  how  you  can 
reason,  nor  how  you  can  imagine,  nor  how  you 
can  remember !  These  mental  processes  are  all 
mysteries  and  too  deep  for  analysis,  and  yet  it 
is  right  that  I  should  say  to  you,  "Think!" 
"Imagine!"  "Remember!"  And  so  I  say  to 
you,  "hope" ! 

But  if  I  cannot  tell  you  how  to  hope,  I  can 
give  you  a  picture  of  how  hope  becomes  strong- 
er and  stronger  by  its  exercise. 

I  have  often  been  told  (altho'  I  do  not  know 
that  it  is  true)  that  when  the  first  bridge  was 
thrown  across  the  river  below  Niagara  Falls, 
an  Indian  took  his  stand  upon  the  bank,  placed 
an  arrow  on  his  bow  and  shot  it  over  to  the 
Canadian  side.  To  the  arrow  a  silken  thread 
was  fastened,  to  the  silken  thread  a  wire,  and 
to  the  wire  a  cable.  Strong  hands  across  the 
river  seized  the  silken  thread  and  gently  drew 
the  wire  across  and  then  the  mighty  cable! 
Upon  the  cable's  invincible  strength  the  bridge 

129 


Hits  and  Misses 

was  hung,  and  over  the  bridge  thousands  and 
thousands  of  pilgrims  have  crossed  in  all  these 
passing  years. 

And  so  the  first  thought  shot  across  the 
chasm  to  the  shores  of  the  other  world  may 
carry  but  a  tiny  thread  of  hope;  but  loving 
hands  will  seize  it  and  draw  up  strand  after 
strand  and  cable  after  cable,  until  upon  the 
bridge  thus  formed  an  endless  procession  of 
aspirations,  wishes,  prayers,  shall  safely  pass 
across. 

This  is  the  figure  of  an  impoverished  and 
imperfect  human  fancy.  But  in  the  epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  you  may  find  a  symbol  given  you 
by  God.  ''Hope  is  an  anchor  of  the  soul  both 
sure  and  steadfast,  and  which  entereth  that 
within  the  veil ;  whither  the  forerunner  is  for 
us  entered — even  JesiisT 


130 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 


"It  is  no  more  possible  that  what  would  be  evil  in 
man  would  be  good  in  God,  than  that  a  circle  on 
earth  would  be  a  square  in  heaven." 

— Martineau. 

"Right  action  always  follows  right  purpose." 

— McKinley  at  Omaha. 

"I  never  questioned  nor  disobeyed  an  order  in  my 
military  life." 

— W.  T.  Sherman. 

"As  soon  as  we  lay  ourselves  entirely  at  His  feet, 
we  have  enough  light  given  us  to  guide  our  steps;  as 
the  foot  soldier,  who  hears  nothing  of  the  councils 
that  determine  the  course  of  the  great  battle  he  is  in, 
hears  plainly  enough  the  word  of  command  which 
he  must  obey." 

— George  Eliot. 

"Lord,  who  shall  abide  in  Thy  tabernacle?  Who 
shall  dwell  in  Thy  holy  hill?  He  that  walketh  up- 
rightly, and  worketh  righteousness  and  speaketh  truth 
in  his  heart." 

— Psalm. 


Then  Peter  opened  his  mouth,  and  said,  Of 
a  truth  I  perceive  that  God  is  no  respecter  of 
persons,  hut  in  every  nation  he  that  feareth 
Him  and  worketh  righteousness  is  accepted 
with  him. — Acts  x.  34,  35. 

In  this  passage  we  strike  bedrock  for  the 
erection  of  all  moral  and  religious  systems. 
And  what  is  more,  we  know  we  strike  it.  Com- 
ing upon  it  after  groping  through  strata  after 
strata  of  loose  and  shifting  material,  is  like 
hearing  the  click  of  the  pickax  on  granite,  after 
digging  down  through  sand  and  gravel.  You 
do  not  have  to  drive  in  any  spiles  as  they  do  in 
the  ooze  under  Venice,  or  lay  down  tier  upon 
tier  of  railroad  irons,  as  they  do  in  the  sand 
under  Chicago;  but  find  eternal  rock,  as  they 
do  on  Manhattan  Island.  "Of  a  truth,  God  is 
no  respecter  of  persons :  but  in  every  nation  he 
that  feareth  Him  and  worketh  righteousness,  is 
accepted  with  Him."  This,  I  say,  is  bedrock. 
It  is  the  most  fundamental,  universal,  compre- 
hensive principle  of  ethics  ever  formulated  by 
man.  On  it  you  can  build  and  rest.  Every  sys- 
tem of  morals  and  religion  will  have  sooner  or 

133 


Hits  and  Misses 

later  to  be  squared  to  that  principle.  God  loves 
and  accepts  righteousness,  right  living,  right 
being,  right  thinking.  No  matter  when  or 
where  he  sees  it,  he  always  accepts  it.  Right- 
ness  or  righteousness  (the  terms  to  me  are 
synonymous)  is  current  coin  of  the  realm,  and 
passes  in  every  province  of  the  Universal  King- 
dom of  moralities. 

Let  me  speak  to  you  to-day  of  rightness,  of 
righteousness  which  God  loves  and  accepts, 
always  and  everywhere.  What  I  have  to  say 
has  been  prompted  by  an  observation  of  Her- 
bert Spencer,  in  animadverting  upon  Christian 
ethics,  ''Rightness  expresses  of  actions  what 
straightness  does  of  lines,  and  there  can  no 
more  be  two  kinds  of  right  action  than  there 
can  be  two  kinds  of  straight  lines."  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  that  is  beautifully  true.  It  rings 
in  my  soul  like  a  silver  bell.  But  there  is  also 
a  sense  in  which  it  is  not  true,  for  it  does  not 
cover  all  the  ground ;  for  as  a  matter  of  fact 
there  are  not  only  two  kinds  of  straight  lines, 
but  many  hundreds.  For  example,  there  is  a 
straight  line  drawn  with  chalk  upon  a  black- 
board by  a  schoolboy,  who  takes  such  pains  to 
make  it  straight  because  he  does  not  know  how 
to  recite  his  lesson  straight,  but  does  know  how 
to  draw  a  line  straight ! 

Then  there  is  a  straight  line  running  along 
134 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

the  pediment  of  the  Parthenon,  with  the  beauti- 
ful carvings  above  it  and  the  beautiful  pillars 
below  it.  Then  there  is  the  straight  line  of  the 
horizon  to  be  seen  far  off  upon  the  rim  of 
the  ocean,  foam-crested,  far-stretching,  majes- 
tic. Then  there  is  a  straight  line  made  by  a  sun- 
beam, clear  from  the  eye  of  the  bright  God  of 
day  to  the  surface  of  the  earth.  The  first  is  a 
straight  line,  and  nothing  else.  But  in  the  sec- 
ond, and  third,  and  fourth,  the  straight  line  is 
raised,  if  I  may  so  say,  to  a  higher  power  of 
both  beauty  and  extension.  It  is  the  same,  and 
yet  not  the  same. 

And  so  I  say  it  is  with  righteousness.  At  its 
base  and  in  its  core,  rightness  is  always  the 
same ;  but  after  all,  this  rudimentary  thing  may 
become  exquisitely  developed,  and  raised  to  a 
higher  power  of  beauty  and  extension.  One 
rightness  may  exceed  another  in  loveliness,  as 
the  sunlight  straight  line,  and  the  horizon 
straight  line,  and  the  Parthenon  straight  line 
exceed  the  blackboard  straight  line.  Permit 
me  to  exhibit  rightness  tO'  you  in  ascending 
stages  of  beauty  and  glory. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  men  do  right  deeds 
and  think  right  thoughts,  unconsciously.  One 
day  a  little  bootblack  sat  on  his  box  eating  a 
loaf  of  bread.  There  came  creeping  up  to  him 
a  barefooted  child,  a  little  girl,  whose  eyes, 

13s 


Hits  and  Misses 

burning  in  their  sockets,  and  whose  teeth, 
gleaming  Hke  fangs  through  her  pale  thin  lips, 
betokened  that  she  was  starving.  The  boy  sur- 
veyed her  for  a  moment,  then  broke  his  loaf 
in  the  middle  and  threw  her  half.  He  was 
young,  he  was  ignorant,  he  was  untutored.  He 
did  this  deed  as  unconscious  of  its  nature  as  an 
animal.  He  did  it,  in  fact,  in  exactly  the  same 
way  that  a  Newfoundland  dog  plunges  into  the 
water  for  a  drowning  man.  He  obeyed  a  pri- 
mal instinct ;  but  neither  knew  that  it  was  an 
instinct,  nor  that  it  was  primal.  It  probably 
did  not  cost  him  an  effort  of  his  will.  It  orig- 
inated in  his  emotional  and  not  in  his  volitional 
nature.  He  gave  this  bread,  as  the  cannibal 
mother  or  a  wolf  mother  give  their  breasts  to 
their  young.  But  in  doing  so,  he  performed 
an  act  of  righteousness  or  rightness,  all  the 
same.  It  was  one  of  those  deeds  that  springs 
out  of  the  eternal  fitness  of  things,  and  is  a 
spark  struck  out  from  the  central  fires  of  good- 
ness. It  was  another  proof  that  ''as  birds  are 
made  to  fly  and  rivers  to  run,  so  was  the  soul  to 
follow  duty."  It  was  a  real  deed  of  rightness,  as 
much  as  a  little  meteor  is  a  real  planet,  or  a 
little  minnow  is  a  real  fish,  or  a  little  sprig  is  a 
real  tree.  It  was  not  the  highest  and  most  beau- 
tiful example  of  rightness ;  but  it  was  rightness, 
although    he  never    dreamed  that  he,  a  little 

136 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

street  Arab,  was  performing  in  this  perfect  sim- 
pHcity  an  equivalent  of  that  deed  which  the 
Christ  told  the  arrogant,  metaphysical,  self- 
conscious  Jews  that  they  must  do  if  they  ever 
expected  to  enter  the  Kingdom  of  God,  viz., 
to  give  a  cup  of  cold  water  to  a  little  child. 
This  deed  of  his  was  the  rudimentary  straight 
line  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  In  a  certain  sense 
the  little  Arab's  was  as  straight  a  line  as  the 
Apostle  John  ever  made.  As  far  as  it  went  it 
was  rightness  through  and  through.  He  did 
not  knozv  that  he  did  so,  but  in  reality  he  was 
doing  just  the  same  sort  of  a  thing  which  Jesus 
Christ  did  upon  the  cross.  He  acted  under  the 
impulse  of  obedience  and  subordination  to  an- 
other not  himself,  to  a  law  higher  than  his  own 
wish,  to  some  far  off  undiscoverable,  unthought 
of  Being  who  sent  him  here  to  do  that  very 
thing.  And  the  deed  was  beautiful,  even 
though  it  zvas  imperfect  or  rather  incomplete. 
There  is  not  a  human  heart  sound  to  the  center 
which  does  not  perceive  that  beauty.  There  is 
not  an  angel  in  heaven  who  would  not  shed  a 
tear  at  the  sight  of  it.  And  what  is  more,  the 
good  God  accepted  it,  if  we  can  believe  our  text 
and  the  testimony  of  our  souls,  as  appreciative- 
ly as  he  ever  accepted  a  deed  from  the  hand  of 
saint  or  martyr.  It  had  its  origin,  this  right 
deed,  in  the  very  center  of  the  boy's  soul.    It 

137 


Hits  and  Misses 

sprang  out  of  the  rudimentary  religious  instinct 
of  the  child's  nature.  It  was  truly  moral  and 
therefore  truly  religious,  for  all  true  morality 
is  at  the  very  least  unconscious  religion. 

Let  that  stand,  then,  for  one  kind  of  Tight- 
ness, such  rudimentary  and  imperfect  right- 
ness  as  one  finds  among  the  ignorant  and  the 
undeveloped  and  the  savage — the  best  they 
have,  but  not  the  best  there  is — accepted  when 
it  is  the  best  they  have,  impossible  to  be  re- 
jected, impossible  to  be  declared  unrighteous- 
ness, as  the  chalk  line  to  be  declared  wnstraight- 
ness.  There  may  be,  there  certainly  is,  much 
evil  along  with  it,  enough  perhaps  to  over- 
shadow it,  enough  to  grow  up  and  crush  it  and 
leave  the  right-hearted  little  gamin  a  miserable, 
degraded  and  devilish  man.  But  still  the  deed 
was  a  right  one. 

In  the  second  place  men  do  rightnesses 
consciously  sometimes,  under  the  dominion  of 
motives  and  faiths  higher  than  those  of  the 
gamin  and  the  savage,  but  not  the  highest. 
Having  attained  the  capacity  of  self-knowledge 
and  begun  to  analyze  their  deeds  and  motives, 
they  obey  the  right  because  it  is  the  right,  and 
for  no  other  cause  at  all.  In  this  obedience  they 
are  unlike  the  gamin,  in  being  conscious  of 
self ;  but  like  him  in  not  being  conscious  of  God. 
Never  has  there  been  a  case  in  the  history  of 

138 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

the  world  more  striking  perhaps  than  that  of 
Matthew  Arnold.  Few  men  have  ever  lived 
whose  capacity  for  self-knowledge  was  more 
profound,  or  who  conformed  more  strictly  to 
those  eternal  principles  of  righteousness  which 
he  intuitively  perceived.  He  loved  them  with 
passion,  and  he  obeyed  them  (so  far  as  we  can 
tell)  with  unfaltering  devotion.  And  yet  to 
him  those  ethical  laws  were  only  the  change- 
less principles  in  the  nature  of  things,  the  for- 
mal principles  of  a  material  universe.  He  did 
not  believe  in  God,  as  we  conceive  Him.  He 
would  not  believe  in  what  he  derisively  called 
a  "magnified  and  non-natural  man."  He 
thought  of  God  only  as  "the  stream  of  tendency 
by  which  all  things  fulfill  the  law  of  their  be- 
ing." He  thought  that  the  God  consciousness 
of  Jesus  could  be  expressed  in  these  words, 
"God  is  an  influence."  All  that  he  felt  sure  of 
was  "that  there  is  a  power  which  makes  for 
righteousness,"  and  that  it  was  man's  duty  to 
yield  to  that  power. 

And  this,  he  did.  And  in  doing  this  he  be- 
lieved that  he  entered  into  the  religious  life. 
He  departed  from  evil  and  "walked  in  awful 
observance  of  an  enduring  clew  within  and 
without  us  which  leads  to  happiness."  In  this 
he  experienced,  so  he  thought,  the  ecstacy  of 
religious    feeling.      "Righteousness,"    he    af- 

139 


Hits  and  Misses 

firmed,  "is  but  a  heightened  conduct,  and  holi- 
ness is  but  a  heightened  righteousness — a  more 
finished,  entire  and  awe-filled  righteousness." 
To  him  religion  was  ethics  heightened,  enkin- 
dled, lit  up  by  feeling,  morality  touched  by  emo- 
tion. 

Now,  just  so  far  as  he  did  right  and  thought 
right,  he  zvas  right.  Up  to  that  extent  he  was 
a  righteous  man.  His  rightness  was  of  the 
same  character  in  its  essence  as  that  of  the  little 
street  Arab ;  but  it  was  raised  to  a  higher 
power,  and  it  went  farther.  For  this  also  is  a 
difference  in  straight  lines  and  right  lines — 
some  go  farther  than  the  others.  One  straight 
line,  for  example,  only  goes  across  a  short 
blackboard,  another  goes  across  a  facade  of  a 
building,  a  third  from  one  island  to  another  on 
an  ocean  horizon,  and  a  fourth  from  earth  to 
sun.  Arnold's  rightness,  then,  is  not  only  more 
beautiful,  that  is  to  say,  raised  to  a  higher  pow- 
er, but  goes  farther  than  the  street  Arab's,  just 
in  proportion  to  his  knowledge  of  its  true  na- 
ture and  his  effort  to  realize  it.  If  this  was  all 
he  could  honestly  see,  and  believe,  and  do,  and 
be  in  the  realm  of  rightness,  then  he  was  as 
righteous  as  he  could  be.  What  he  did  and 
was,  possessed  those  eternal  elements  of  beauty 
which  are  inherent  even  in  a  partial,  rudimen- 
tary, imperfect  form  of  rightness.     All  men 

140 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

must  admire  it.  The  angels  must  recognize  it. 
God  will  accept  it.  It  is  current  coin.  It  is 
right,  and  therefore  righteous.  To  deny  this 
would  be  to  confound  moral  distinctions.  It 
would  be  to  call  right  wrong,  and  bitter,  sweet ; 
to  put  darkness  for  light  and  light  for  dark- 
ness. No  honest  man  could  do  this.  His  very 
soul  would  protest.  He  cannot  in  his  heart 
refuse  to  recognize  the  essential  element  of 
rightness  in  the  moral  lives  of  men  like  Arnold 
and  Emerson,  and  in  those  of  the  great  agnos- 
tics like  Spencer,  Huxley,  and  Darwin.  In 
fact  there  is  a  sort  of  beauty  in  this  rightness 
that  awakens  a  peculiar  feeling  of  admiration 
in  the  mind.  Its  realization  under  such  diffi- 
cult circumstances,  and  from  such  inadequate 
motives,  lends  a  tragic  grandeur  to  it.  It  is 
like  a  man's  living  a  pure  and  happy  life  in  a 
County  poor-house,  with  no  wife  and  children 
to  inspire  him,  and  nothing  to  live  for,  and 
nothing  to  labor  for,  and  nothing  to  hope  for. 
It  is  all  I  can  do,  for  one,  to  live  my  life  even 
with  all  the  hopes  and  incentives  of  Christian- 
ity. And  when  I  see  such  men  living  beautifully 
without  those  incentives  and  hopes,  I  am,  as  it 
were,  struck  dumb  with  admiration.  But  that 
is  not  the  point.  The  point  is,  are  such  lives 
truly  and  wholly  moral  and  religious?      Has 

rightness  or  righteousness  attained  its  perfect 

141 


Hits  and  Misses 

beauty?  Has  it  gone  as  far  and  been  carried 
up  to  as  high  a  power  as  possible?  I  claim 
that  it  has  not.  It  is  at  best  a  limited  and  par- 
tial rightness,  because  it  is  not  animated  by  the 
highest  motives  and  conceptions.  Even  though 
the  outward  form  and  expression  of  such  lives 
may  be  very  beautiful,  that  beauty  may  be  very 
imperfect  and  of  an  inferior  order.  It  may  ex- 
ceed the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and  Phar- 
isees enormously,  and  yet  fall  far  short  of  the 
ideal.  Who  knows  how  much  spiritual  pride 
may  be  in  it?  Who  shall  say  whether  it  may 
not  be  clouded  by  a  stubborn  human  obstinacy  ? 
It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  it  were  wholly 
devoid  of  these  elements  which  fasten  them- 
selves so  tenaciously  on  all  human  conduct,  like 
rust  on  iron ! 

But  give  them  the  utmost  credit.  Allow  that 
so  far  as  they  have  gone,  they  are  right.  Ad- 
mit that  they  are,  whether  these  men  knew  it 
or  not,  truly  religious  as  far  as  they  are  truly 
moral.  And  even  then,  they  have  not  attained 
their  highest  power  nor  gone  as  far  as  they 
may. 

For  in  the  third  place  there  is  a  higher 
form  of  rightness  or  righteousness,  and  that 
which  is  inferior  can  never  be  the  equal  of  the 
superior.  This  form  is  the  consummation  of  all 
the  lower  forms.    It  is  the  efflorescence  of  that 

142 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

rudimentary  germ  in  the  street  Arab  which  has 
been  carried  up  through  numerous  gradations 
and  transfigurations  in  Arnold,  and  Emerson, 
and  Huxley,  and  Spencer,'  and  Darwin  to  its 
blossom  and  its  fruit  in  John  and  Jesus.  It  is 
a  righteousness  or  rightness  having  its  origin 
in  love  and  loyalty  to  a  Heavenly  Father  who 
is  himself  the  eternal  source  of  all  righteous- 
ness. The  rightness  of  the  Arab  is  the  beauty 
of  the  life  of  the  plant  in  the  bulb.  That  of  the 
philosopher  is  that  life  in  the  stalk,  but  that  of 
Jesus  is  that  life  in  the  bloom. 

Perhaps  the  demonstration  of  this  assertion 
is  impossible.  At  any  rate,  we  have  our  faiths 
and  our  intuitions.    And  this  is  mine. 

All  conduct  becomes  more  beautiful  in  pro- 
portion as  it  is  inspired  by  loyalty  to  intelligence 
and  hearts  rather  than  to  forces  and  laws! 

And  so  there  is  a  sublimity  in  rightness  high- 
er than  even  the  tragic  grandeur  of  those  who 
do  right  because  they  feel  a  force  and  law,  a 
power  not  themselves  which  makes  for  right- 
eousness. And  it  is  that  sublimity  which  grows 
out  of  duty  done  in  humble  devotion  to  a 
Heavenly  Father  whose  will  and  wisdom  we 
trust  with  absolute  devotion.  I  say  that  per- 
haps I  cannot  prove  this;  but  I  can  at  least 
give  my  reasons.     And  they  are  such  as  these : 

a.  The  conduct  of  a  little  orphan  child  that 
143 


Hits  and  Misses 

bends  humbly,  patiently,  blindly  to  a  set  of  rules 
posted  on  the  door  of  an  asylum,  issuing  from 
sources  the  nature  of  which  he  knows  nothing 
and  which  stand  for  his  limited  intelligence  as 
mere  abstractions,  but  terribly  real  and  true, 
may  have  a  beauty  of  its  own,  and  really  has 
this  beauty,  a  beauty  tragic  and  pathetic.  But 
when  the  child  has  been  transplanted  from  an 
asylum  to  a  hoine,  and  knows  that  those  same 
principles  of  conduct  are  not  only  enunciated 
by  the  lips  of  his  new  found  parents,  but  are 
incarnated  in  their  beautiful  and  tender  lives, 
he  now  obeys  them  through  a  passionate  devo- 
tion, admiration  and  love  for  those  beings  who 
brood  over  him,  and  pray  over  him,  and  fold 
him  to  their  hearts,  and  kiss  him  with  a  ten- 
derness which  melts  him  to  tears.  Then,  to 
me  at  least,  his  obedience  and  his  rightness 
have  undergone  a  transfiguration,  have  been 
crowned  with  a  new  glory,  and  have  reached 
their  final  efflorescence. 

b.  And  so  the  strict  and  dogged  obedience 
of  a  soldier  to  every  regulation  of  the  camp  and 
every  order  of  the  manual  may  have  a  certain 
element  of  beauty  and  a  certain  modicum  of 
rightness ;  but  when  at  last  there  comes  a  gen- 
eral in  whose  scarred  face,  whose  commanding 
person,  whose  princely  manners,  whose  royal 

soul,  all  those  regulations  and  orders  have  be- 

144 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

come  incarnated,  and  the  soldier  becomes  in- 
flamed, Ht  up,  and  Hfted  out  of  himself  in  a 
passion  of  personal  loyalty  to  this  great  leader, 
to  me,  at  least  he  has  carried  duty  and  right- 
eousness up  immeasurably  higher  than  before. 

Whether  I  am  right  or  not,  it  seems  to  be 
a  law  of  our  human  life  that  the  moment  the 
principles  and  laws  of  being  are  incarnated  in 
some  great  leader,  some  sublime  personality, 
we  leap  to  them  in  him,  as  drooping  plants  rise 
at  the  fall  of  the  rain.  Dull,  stupid,  lethargic, 
lifeless  obedience  is  suddenly  kindled  into  pas- 
sionate and  sublime  enthusiasms.  In  the  last 
number  of  one  of  our  great  journals,  a  pro^ 
found  thinker  began  an  article  with  this  simple 
aphorism :  "A  young  man  naturally,  and  a 
middle-aged  man  of  necessity,  chooses  giants 
for  guides."  And  what  is  this  assertion  but  the 
disclosure  of  the  fact  that  we  need  to  recognize 
all  virtue,  and  power,  and  law  as  originating 
in,  or  at  least  emanating  from,  personality. 

Now  and  then  there  may  be  a  great  philoso- 
pher who  is  capable  of  rendering  obedience  to 
''a  power  not  ourselves"  (and  not  a  magnified 
and  non-natural  man),  which  makes  for  right- 
eousness. But  the  masses  of  men  have  never 
yet  been  able  to  do  it ;  or,  if  they  have  done  it, 
to  do  it  heartily,  and  joyously,  in  the  genuine 
beauty  of  holiness  and  righteousness. 

145 


Hits  and  Misses 

But  whenever  and  wherever  a  genuine  faith 
in  a  personal  God  whom  we  may  justly  call  our 
Father  has  been  awakened,  conduct  has  under- 
gone a  marvelous  transformation.  Mere  cold 
and  formal  obedience  has  been  transfigured  into 
the  glorious  and  passionate  devotion  of  saints 
and  martyrs. 

And,  to  my  mind,  this  is  the  essential  char- 
acteristic of  the  beauty,  of  the  righteousness  of 
Jesus  Christ.  I  cannot  think  of  him  as  render- 
ing obedience  to  an  impersonal  power  that 
makes  for  righteousness.  He  came  to  do  the 
will  of  a  Heavenly  Father.  The*  laws  which  he 
obeyed  appear  to  have  seemed  to  him  the 
personal  volitions  of  this  divine  Parent.  He 
no  more  conceived  of  them  as  the  impersonal 
principles  of  a  material  cosmos  than  as  the 
ordinances  of  a  set  of  blind-eyed  Scribes  and 
Pharisees.  Whenever  he  heard  the  call  of  duty, 
it  seemed  to  him  the  voice  of  a  Father's  love; 
whenever  he  saw  a  pathway  of  toil  and  labor 
opened,  he  saw  a  presence  walking  before  him ; 
when  the  cross  was  laid  upon  his  shoulders  he 
felt  the  kindly  touch  of  the  hand  which  placed 
it  there.  And  this  was  what  made  his  life  radi- 
ant with  confidence.  This  was  what  transfig- 
ured his  conduct.  Other  men  have  done  the 
same  deeds  that  he  did,  but  not  in  the  same 
way.     And,  to  me,  that  which  differentiates 

146 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

Him  from  them  all,  and  His  deeds  from  theirs, 
is  this  very  clear  apprehension  of  that  Father 
whom  the  philosophers  ridicule  as  a  magnified 
and  non-natural  man. 

It  is  easy  to  ridicule  this  idea,  for  it  is  so 
sacred.  In  fact,  the  more  sublime  and  sacred  a 
thing  is,  the  easier  it  is  to  be  ridiculed.  Noth- 
ing is  easier  to  ridicule  than  a  boy's  love  and 
reverence  for  his  mother,  or  a  man's  love  and 
reverence  for  his  God.  And  sometimes  we 
must  confess  that  men  make  their  own  faith 
absurd.  We  belittle  our  faith  by  dragging  God 
down  to  the  level  of  the  little  trivialities  of  our 
lives  and  making  it  seem  to  others  as  if  the  Be- 
ing we  adored  had  nothing  else  to  do  but  tie 
our  shoes  or  find  our  lost  pins. 

A  Welshman  who  visited  London  while  ex- 
tensive sewage  improvements  were  going  on 
is  said  to  have  lost  his  watch.  He  reported  the 
matter  to  Scotland  Yard,  and  the  officials  as- 
sured him  that  they  would  leave  no  stone  un- 
turned to  find  the  missing  timekeeper.  On  re- 
turning to  his  wanderings  about  the  great  me- 
tropolis, Taffy  saw  not  only  stones  upturned, 
but  street  after  street  torn  up  by  the  laborers 
who  were  laying  sewer  pipes,  and  was  told 
there  were  thirty-six  miles  of  road  in  the  same 
condition.     This  quick  and  unstinted  interest 

in  his  personal  affairs  astonished  him,  and, 

147 


Hits  and  Misses 

rushing  back  to  the  office,  he  exclaimed  to  the 
wondering  inspector,  "I  didn't  think  I  was  giv- 
ing you  all  that  trouble.  If  you  don't  find  the 
watch  by  Sunday,  I  wouldn't  tear  up  any  more 
streets."  There  may  be  religious  people  as 
credulous  as  the  Welshman  and  who  think  that 
God  has  nothing  else  to  do  but  tear  up  the  uni- 
verse to  find  their  watches. 

But  this  absurd  egotism  is  not  that  simple, 
intelligent  and  reverent  recognition  of  a  Heav- 
enly Father  of  which  we  speak,  of  which  Jesus 
gave  us  our  supreme  illustration,  and  which 
Tennyson  felt  when  he  uttered  those  memora- 
ble words,  "Take  away  belief  in  the  self-con- 
scious personality  of  God,  and  you  take  the 
backbone  out  of  the  universe!"  In  it,  there 
has  never  been  any  absurdity,  and  its  results 
have  always  been  sublime.  That  faith  in  his 
wisdom  and  his  love  has  sustained  the  saints 
and  heroes  in  their  highest  endeavors,  and  lifted 
their  moralities  up  into  the  realm  of  holiness. 
It  was  this  strong  confidence  that  made  the  life 
of  Theophilus  Wilson,  whose  body  lies  on  Col- 
lege Hill  awaiting  his  burial,  an  idyl,  a  hymn, 
a  psalm,  an  epic.  He,  too,  like  Moses,  lived  as 
if  he  saw  the  invisible.  In  him  also  morality 
was  lifted  up,  grade  after  grade,  into  holiness. 
The  bulb  shot  up  into  the  stalk,  and  the  stalk 
broke    into    the   blossom.      The   rudimentary 

148 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

righteousness  of  the  savage  was  transfigured 
into  that  of  the  philosopher,  and  the  philoso- 
pher's glorified  into  that  of  the  saint. 

And  so  as  there  are  trees  and  trees,  lines  and 
lines,  stars  and  stars,  there  are  righteousnesses 
and  righteousnesses.  And  although  Peter 
found  in  the  rough  and  earnest  Roman  soldier 
a  certain  rightness  which  God  could  not  reject, 
yet  zvho  does  not  believe  that  in  the  after  years 
of  his  life,  it  suffered  a  sea  change  into  some- 
thing new  and  strange  and  became  as  much 
more  beautiful  than  a  Roman  soldier's  right- 
ness, as  a  sunbeam  straight  line  is  than  a  school 
boy's  chalk  line. 

Rightness  or  righteousness  is  capable  then 
of  apotheosis  after  apotheosis.  Conduct  and 
life  may  become  more  and  more  right  and  beau- 
tiful, acceptable  with  God  and  man.  It  is  a 
wonderful  thought,  that  we  may  here  prepare 
a  character  and  a  method  of  life  that,  as  I  said 
at  first,  are  current  coin  in  every  corner  of 
God's  universe,  and  that  will  admit  a  man  to 
any  society. 

Under  the  influence  of  this  sublime  trust  and 
love  for  the  Heavenly  Father,  David  Living- 
stone acquired  a  sort  of  rightness  that  made 
him  equally  at  home  in  a  palace  or  a  hovel.  It 
was  not  only  a  passport  to  Windsor  and  to 
Westminster,  but  a  safe  conduct  ^mong  sav- 

149 


Hits  and  Misses 

ages  and  cannibals.  He  was  everywhere  and 
always  a  right  man,  a  righteous  man,  and  was 
as  much  at  home  in  heaven  the  first  day  he 
entered  as  among  the  huts  of  the  dark  skinned 
savages  on  the  banks  of  the  Congo. 

Lives  like  those  of  Cornelius  and  Livingstone 
are  right  lives,  and  God  cannot  reject  them. 
But  even  these  are  not  perfect  lives,  my  friend. 
That  which  is  right  in  them  is  right,  and  God 
recognizes  it.  But  in  all  of  them,  how  much 
there  is  of  wrong! 

Dear  David  Livingstone — apostle,  martyr, 
saint — he  felt  the  need  of  sheltering  himself  be- 
neath a  righteousness  greater  than  his  own.  It 
was  the  hope  of  that  humbled  heart  that  when 
he  stood  before  the  great  All  Father,  He  would 
impute  to  him  the  "righteousness"  of  Christ. 
And  this  was  the  hope  of  Theophilus  Wilson, 
and  of  that  long  list  of  saints  who  have  criti- 
cized their  own  imperfect  rightness  in  the  light 
of  the  Savior's  perfectness. 

It  is  this  "second"  kind  of  righteousness 
which  Mr.  Spencer  animadverts  upon,  perhaps. 

"There  are  two  kinds  of  Christian  righteous- 
ness :  the  one  without  us,  which  we  have  by 
imputation ;  the  other  in  us,  which  consisteth  of 
faith,  hope,  charity,  and  other  virtues,"  said  the 
great  and  good  Hooker.  For  one,  I  share  this 
feeling  of  the  need  of  having  a  goodness  im- 

150 


Righteousness  is  Rightness 

puted  to  me  which  is  greater  than  my  own. 
Who  does  not  feel  that  we  must  daily  and  hour- 
ly be  treated  by  all  men  as  if  we  were,  what  we 
are  not?  Is  not  this  true  of  every  relationship 
of  life  which  is  based  on  love?  Do  you,  sir, 
or  do  you,  madam,  think  that  your  wife  or  your 
husband  loves  you  only  for  your  own  good- 
ness ?  Then  I  must  disabuse  you  of  that  agree- 
able but  mistaken  solace.  Over  the  varied  and 
offensive  imperfections  of  your  life  they  throw 
the  mantle  of  their  own  love.  They  love  you 
not  only  for  what  you  are,  but  in  spite  of  what 
you  are.  "With  all  you  faults,  they  love  you 
still !"  It  is  the  holy  nature  of  love,  thus  to 
cover  up  the  faults  of  others  under  the  robe  of 
its  own  right  mindedness.  And  it  is  this  ten- 
derness of  the  divine  heart  of  God  as  revealed 
in  Christ  to  which  the  humbled  and  the  peni- 
tent in  all  ages  have  made  their  appeal.  They 
have  done  their  best,  and  they  have  done  beau- 
tifully and  rightly  often.  But  how  much  they 
have  left  undone!  How  incomplete  and  im- 
perfect have  those  lives  and  characters  been  in 
spite  of  all.  And  so  they  have  cast  themselves 
upon  that  divine  compassion  which  treats  them 
as  if  they  were  what  they  are  not,  as  every  lover 
treats  the  object  of  that  love. 

If  this  conception  of  Christian  ethics  is  an 
error,  if  it  is  to  sail  under  false  colors  to  claim 

151 


Hits  and  Misses 

a  Tightness  not  one's  own,  then  the  whole  meth- 
od of  earthly  love  is  also  wrong.  But  its 
method  is  not  wrong.  We  may  trust  and  we 
may  claim  from  all  our  loved  ones,  the  impu- 
tation of  a  goodness  not  our  own.  And  this  we 
trust  and  plead  with  God. 

We  may  not  abuse  it.  We  may  not  exoner- 
ate ourselves  from  the  passionate  effort  to  raise 
our  own  rightness  up  to  its  highest  power  of 
beauty ;  but  when  we  have  attained  our  utmost 
limit  we  must  plead  and  trust  a  divine  tender- 
ness and  compassion  for  our  imperfections. 


152 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 


"The  mind  profits  by  the  wreck  of  every  passion, 
and  we  may  measure  our  road  to  wisdom  by  the  sor- 
rows we  have  undergone." 

— Bulwer-Lytton. 

"Whatever  below  God  is  the  object  of  our  love,  will 
at  some  time  or  other  be  the  matter  of  our  sorrow." 

— Cecil. 

"Ah!  if  you  knew  what  peace  there  is  in  an  ac- 
cepted sorrow." 

— Mme.  Guyon. 

"I  cannot  but  think  that  he  who  finds  a  certain 
proportion  of  pain  and  evil  inseparably  woven  up 
in  the  life  of  the  very  worms,  will  bear  his  own  share 
with  more   courage  and  submission." 

— Huxley. 


For  our  light  aMiction,  which  is  but  for  a 
moment,  worketh  for  us  a  far  more  exceeding 
and  eternal  weight  of  glory;  while  we  look  not 
at  the  things  which  are  seen,  hut  at  the  things 
which  are  not  seen:  for  the  things  which  are 
seen  are  temporal;  hut  the  things  which  are 
not  seen  are  eternal. — II.  Cor.  iv,  ly,  i8. 

Let  us  at  the  very  outset  clearly  perceive  and 
firmly  grasp  the  idea  in  the  mind  of  the  apostle. 

It  is,  that  we  misjudge  our  earthly  life  be- 
cause we  look  only  upon  its  surface,  while  if  we 
took  the  trouble  to  gaze  down  into  its  depths, 
we  should  perceive  that,  the  existence  of  which 
explains  the  elements  which  confound  our  un- 
derstanding.   For  example — Sorrow ! 

Something  lies  back  of  its  visible  manifesta- 
tion and  down  below  its  surface,  which  is  work- 
ing silently,  slowly,  and  imperceptibly ;  but  with 
an  accuracy  and  a  certainty  like  the  mechanism 
of  the  sidereal  system,  to  accomplish  results 
whose  ultimate  manifestation  will  explain  and 
justify  the  whole  bewildering  operation. 

The  affliction  itself  works  !  Not  you;  but  the 
affliction!     There  is  something  in  pain  and  suf- 

155 


Hits  and  Misses 

fering  that  is  like  yeast,  and  which  works,  and 
works,  and  works ! 

To  some  of  us  all  the  time,  and  to  most  of  us 
some  of  the  time,  life  seems  a  hotch-potch,  a 
pot-pourri  of  most  miscellaneous  events.  Each 
day  is  like  a  bucket  of  a  chain  pump  coming  up 
out  of  a  great  grab-bag  of  disconnected  and 
meaningless  experiences,  and  emptying  them 
helter-skelter  into  our  existence.  Some  are 
good  and  some  are  bad,  and  each  one  is  to  be 
judged  by  itself,  apart  from  all  the  rest.  Sor- 
rows and  joys,  successes  and  reverses,  hopes 
and  disappointments  are  all  jumbled  together, 
and  we  regard  the  collocated  events  of  a  month 
or  a  year  much  as  we  would  a  mass  of  house- 
hold materials  thrown  out  upon  the  sidewalk 
from  the  window  of  a  burning  building. 

How  few  people  in  any  community,  how  few 
in  any  age,  really  and  truly  believe  in  the  hidden 
law  that  binds  them  into  a  beautiful  unity ! 
How  few  cherish  a  profound  and  sincere  con- 
viction that  there  is  in  this  mass  of  apparently 
uncorrected  events  an  invisible  element  that  is 
working  like  yeast  in  dough,  like  force  in  a 
crystal,  like  life  in  a  plant,  organizing  and  mar- 
shaling all  into  something  homogeneous,  beau- 
tiful and  satisfying  to  the  soul ! 

How  is  it  with  you  ?  Do  you  believe  that  all 
there  is  of  life  is  lying  in  plain  sight  upon  the 

156 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

surface,  or  do  you  believe  that  there  is  an  invis- 
ible something  working  in  its  great  deeps? 

Let  us  examine  this  matter. 

a.  In  the  first  place,  in  every  realm  of  life 
there  are  one  or  more  invisible  elements,  and 
it  is  these  alone  which  are  of  any  permanent 
significance.  I  have  already  instanced  the 
dough,  the  crystal,  and  the  plant.  What  is  it 
that  you  really  see  in  them?  Nothing  but  the 
particles  of  matter  which  the  unseen  forces  are 
shifting  from  one  place  to  another,  as  the  invis- 
ible electricity  moves  the  visible  wheels.  And 
it  is  not  the  dough  nor  the  diamond  nor  the 
plant  that  is  of  permanent  importance,  but  the 
forces  which  inhere  within  them;  for  as  long 
as  they  find  matter  to  work  with,  they  will  make 
other  dough  and  diamonds  and  plants. 

Now  let  your  minds  dwell  for  a  moment  upon 
those  multitudinous  forces  which  are  thus 
working  silently  and  invisibly  in  the  plastic  ma- 
terial of  the  visible  world.  You  see  the  clouds 
go  drifting  across  the  sky,  but  you  do  not  see 
the  shepherd  wind  which  drives  them  onward 
like  a  flock  of  sheep.  You  see  the  floods  of  sun- 
light, but  not  the  waves  of  the  ether.  You  see 
the  needle  move  around  the  dial  of  the  compass, 
but  not  the  magnetic  current  which  propels  it. 
You  see  the  multitudinous  forms  which  clothe 
themselves   in   matter,   but  not  the  whirling 

157 


Hits  and  Misses 

atoms  which  are  the  very  essence  of  that  mat- 
ter. You  see  the  rivers  gHding  to  the  sea 
and  the  planets  moving  through  the  sky, 
but  not  the  awful  force  of  gravity  which 
ever  draws  them  to  the  ocean  or  guides 
them  on  their  journeys  through  the  infinite 
depths  of  space.  You  see  the  myriad  liv- 
ing things  which  swim  in  seas,  and  flit 
in  sunny  atmospheres,  and  creep  through  for- 
ests or  burrow  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth ;  but 
not  the  life  which  animates  those  living  things. 
And  look  at  man !  Here  is  a  soldier  leading  a 
forlorn  hope,  an  inventor  perfecting  a  new  ma- 
chine, an  orator  swaying  an  audience  as  a  storm 
sways  the  tops  of  the  trees  in  a  forest.  You  see 
their  hands  move,  their  lips  quiver,  their  cheeks 
blanche,  their  eyes  flash ;  but  these  are  not  the 
men  themselves.  There  is  something  hidden 
in  them,  producing  these  outward  manifesta- 
tions which  no  one  ever  saw,  an  imponderable 
essence  eluding  the  keenest  vision,  and  mock- 
ing the  most  searching  investigation.  It  is  the 
psychos,  the  animus,  the  mind,  the  soul,  the 
spirit !  It  flashes  on  you  in  a  smile,  it  startles 
you  with  a  frown,  it  saddens  you  with  a  tear, 
and  in  these  emanations  you  almost  think  you 
have  beheld  the  thing  itself.  But  just  as  you 
seem  about  to  seize  it,  you  know  that  it  has 

gone,  and  yet  you  know  that  if  you  had  the 

158 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

organ  for  its  perception,  it  would  stand  before 
you  the  one  abiding  and  imperishable  reality 
among  all  these  evanescent  forms. 

And  what  must  we  conclude  from  this?  Is 
the  audible,  visible,  tangle  world  the  real  one; 
or  that  other  world,  of  which  these  perceptible 
forms  are  but  the  transient  manifestations  ?  Is 
all  of  life  upon  the  surface,  or  is  the  most  of  it 
hidden  in  its  unfathomable  depths  ?  Are  we  not 
driven  to  say  that  nothing  which  we  see  is  of 
any  consequence  at  all,  save  as  a  manifestation 
of  those  holy  things  we  do  not  see? 

b.  In  the  second  place,  in  every  realm  of  life 
or  being  these  invisible  forces  are  producing 
not  only  visible ;  but  also  invisible  results. 

I  mean  by  this,  that  at  any  given  moment  in 
which  you  examine  their  operations,  that  which 
you  see  being  done  is  only  a  small  and  inferior 
part  of  that  which  they  are  really  accomplish- 
ing. They  are  all  at  work  upon  webs,  the  pat- 
terns of  which  are  so  delicate  that  we  can  never 
tell  when  they  are  finished,  and  they  play  into 
each  other  in  such  a  way  that  we  clearly  see 
that  there  is  no  real  end  to  any  one  of  them. 
So  true  is  this,  that  no  process  of  nature  which 
is  absolutely  new  to  us  could  give  us  any  real 
clew  to  its  final  outcome,  and  experience  alone 
can  guide  us  to  any  conception  of  the  results 
of  these  mysterious  operations. 

159 


Hits  and  Misses 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  you  had  never 
known  anything  at  all  about  the  incubation  of 
an  tgg.  You  enter  a  barn,  and  somewhere  in 
a  quiet  comer  of  the  hay  mow,  you  find  an  old 
brown  leghorn  hen  sitting  quietly  and  solemnly 
in  her  nest.  You  watch  her  for  an  hour  or  so, 
and  perhaps  come  back  another  day,  and  then 
the  next.  In  all  this  time  you  have  not  seen  her 
move  a  muscle,  draw  a  breath  nor  w^nk  an 
eye.  Astounded  at  the  spectacle,  you  draw  a 
little  nearer,  thinking  she  may  be  dead,  and 
stretch  out  your  hand  to  discover.  In  another 
instant  you  have  satisfied  your  curiosity.  Every 
feather  is  as  full  of  life  as  a  young  serpent,  and 
a  piece  of  your  forefinger  is  in  her  bony  bill ! 
And  if  your  courage  and  your  curiosity  have 
survived  this  onslaught,  you  may  put  your 
hand  beneath  her  body.  What  can  it  mean? 
Here  are  a  dozen  eggs  which  are  slowly  being 
addled  by  a  heat  that  seems  to  issue  from  a 
furnace. 

What  is  it  all  about?  You  cannot  tell.  All 
that  lies  upon  the  surface  resembles  idiocy  or 
lunacy.  But  there  is  something  beneath  the 
surface.  An  operation  is  taking  place  than 
w^hich  there  is  nothing  more  beautiful  or  won- 
derful in  the  whole  realm  of  nature.  Results 
of  the  most  invisible  and  surprising  character 

are  being  slowly  but  surely  attained,  of  which 

i6o 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

what  you  see  could  not  afford  the  sHghtest 
clew.  A  tiny  bill  is  picking  through  each  shell. 
A  little  life  is  budding  there.  And  soon  the 
proud  and  happy  mother  leads  her  downy 
brood  out  into  the  wide,  wide  world. 

Suppose  that  you  were  a  man  of  some  for- 
gotten era,  issuing  from  a  cave  after  an  age- 
long sleep,  and  should  stumble  into  the  engine 
room  of  a  great  manufactory.  You  behold  the 
fiery  furnaces,  the  whirling  fly-wheel,  the 
plunging  piston,  the  sooty  firemen,  the  grimy 
engineer,  and  see  that  all  is  motion,  all  is  meas- 
ureless power.  But  what  is  it  for?  Nothing 
comes  of  it.  Nothing  is  getting  done.  It  does 
not  give  the  slightest  hint  of  any  purpose  and 
any  other  end. 

But  let  me  lead  you  through  the  upper  rooms. 
Here,  in  these  beautiful  webs  of  silk  (woven 
from  the  cocoon  of  worms  as  ignorant  as  you 
of  what  they  themselves  were  doing),  rich  with 
lustrous  loveliness  and  iridescent  sheen,  you  see 
an  end  attained  which  inexperience  could  never 
guess.  Who  would  dream  that  in  a  rotting 
acorn  was  being  built  a  living  oak,  or  that  in 
the  entrails  of  a  nasty  grub  there  was  the 
eidolon  of  a  beautiful  butterfly. 

What  could  you  imagine  could  be  the  result 
of  a  battle  if  you  did  not  know?  Stand  with 
me  on  this  promontory  overlooking  the  bay  of 

i6i 


Hits  and  Misses 

Santiago.  A  Sabbath  stillness  broods  upon 
the  world.  A  dozen  ships  are  floating  on  the 
waters,  like  the  clouds  upon  the  sky,  and  songs 
and  prayers  are  wafted  from  their  decks. 
Hush  !  it  is  the  very  peace  of  God ! 

Quietly,  stealthily  another  flock  of  vessels 
like  themselves  comes  creeping  through  the 
harbor's  mouth.  Hark !  the  silence  of  death  is 
on  the  world.  A  sudden  shiver  runs  through 
the  sleeping  fleet.  The  ships  awake!  With 
leaps  and  plunges  and  swoopings,  like  lions, 
tigers,  eagles,  they  fall  upon  their  foes.  Gar- 
nered lightnings  flash  from  their  sides.  Thun- 
ders peal  and  echo  and  reverberate.  Crash  fol- 
lows crash.  They  reel  and  stagger  like 
drunken  men.  Conflagrations  burst  forth  from 
the  holds  of  the  Spanish  ships,  and  their  decks 
are  red  with  blood.  The  groans  of  dying  men 
are  heard. 

What  does  it  mean?  If  all  there  is  of  war 
lies  here  upon  the  surface,  then  war  is  hell ! 

But  there  is  something  there  you  do  not  see. 
It  is  working,  working,  w^orking,  and  in  a  few 
nort  days  will  have  achieved  the  liberation  of 
millions  of  men  from  degradation.  The  clash- 
ings  of  these  leviathans  will  change  the  geog- 
raphy of  the  world.  That  which  you  have  seen 
is  a  phantom,  a  phantasmagoria.    The  reality, 

you  did  not  see  at  all.    And  so  with  the  whole 

162 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

war,  of  which  this  was  only  a  battle.  Stupen- 
dous changes  have  been  wrought ;  but  no  one 
knew  what  was  going  on  under  the  stagnant 
surface  of  our  national  life  six  months  before 
it  was  churned  into  this  foam.  And  yet  the 
wheels  were  revolving  then ;  the  mighty  yeast 
was  working,  the  eggs  were  being  hatched; 
though  all  was  out  of  sight,  until  the  sublime 
denouement,  the  marvelous  disclosure.  The 
people  did  not  see  it.  The  Senators  did  not  see 
it.     The  President  did  not  see  it. 

And  still  the  wheels  are  going  round.  What 
web  is  being  wrought  in  those  subterranean 
chambers  now,  think  you?  You  cannot  tell. 
The  great  depths  are  too  deep.  But  the  end  is 
not  yet.  Fabrics  of  a  still  more  wondrous 
beauty  are  being  wrought  upon  those  hidden 
looms.  God's  weavers  are  very  still.  They  do 
not  even  whisper  at  their  toil.    They  keep  their 

secrets  well. 

And  here  we  pause  to  get  our  bearings,  and 
turn  the  light  which  we  have  found,  upon  the 
individual  problems  of  our  earthly  lives. 

Two  things  are  clear.  There  is  an  invisible 
element.  That  invisible  element  is  producing 
undiscoverable  results.  And  this  is  true  of 
sorrow,  the  Apostle  says. 

We  must  deal  with  sorrow,  you  and  I ;  for 
the  most  of  us  have  reached  a  point  where  dis- 

163 


Hits  and  Misses 

appointment  and  loss  confront  us  at  every 
turn.  The  days  of  boundless  hopes  and  glori- 
ous confidence  have  passed.  We  have  missed 
too  many  joys  to  feel  at  ease  about  the  future. 
We  have  ceased  to  count  our  chickens  before 
they  are  hatched.  The  game  has  too  often 
escaped  the  hunter,  to  encourage  him  to  boast 
until  he  has  it  in  his  bag. 

On  one  of  my  many  country  walks  I  saw  a 
couple  of  little  boys  come  rushing  around  the 
corner  of  a  farm  house.  One  of  them  had  a 
flobert  gun,  and  they  were  evidently  in  pursuit 
of  an  English  sparrow.  He  lighted  on  a  twig 
at  last,  an  innocent  and  shining  mark.  The 
eager  Nimrod  laid  his  gun  across  a  fence,  shut 
his  left  eye,  took  long,  deliberate  aim — and 
fired! 

''Did  you  hit  him?"  said  I,  although  I  had 
seen  the  sparrow  flit  into  the  foliage  as  easy  and 
care-free  as  if  the  bullet  had  been  a  ladybug. 

'T  didn't  kill  him ;  but  I  feathered  him !" 
said  my  little  Nimrod,  shaking  his  proud  head 
back  and  forth  in  sublime  assurance. 

When  you  were  a  little  boy,  did  you  ever 
TOTALLY  miss  a  bird  ?  /  never  did.  I  always 
saw  the  feathers  fly.  But  now,  someway,  I 
have  to  have  my  birds  in  my  bag  before  I  think 
I  have  hit  them.  I  have  missed  so  many  shots 
that  I  have  lost  my  imagination. 

164 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

Yes,  there  are  more  misses  than  hits.  Our 
game-bag  is  not  very  full.  Our  hearts  are 
pretty  empty  at  times.  Our  hopes  have  not 
all  materialized.  Disappointment  has  dogged 
us.  Wth.3NQ  suffered;  yes,  we  hdive  suffered! 
We  do  not  need  a  dictionary  to  know  what 
pain  and  sorrow  are. 

But  do  we  know  what  they  are  in  their 
nature  f  Do  we  know  what  lies  under  their 
agitated  surfaces  down  in  the  great  deeps  ?^ 

My  friends,  there  is  a  divine  yeast  of  blessing 
in  them.  And  it  is  working,  working,  work- 
ing. 

So  far,  we  are  on  scientific  ground.  We 
can  easily  believe  that  this  invisible  element  is 
to  be  found  in  sorrow.  But  what  is  it  working, 
good  or  ill?  There's  the  rnh.  Do  we  not  enter 
a  realm  of  hopeless  conjecture  here? 

I  do  not  believe  it.  Nothing  in  the  history 
of  human  life  has  ever  received  a  stronger, 
more  unanimous,  or  more  overwhelming  testi- 
mony than  this— that  to  him  who  misuses  and 
abuses  sorrow,  it  proves  a  deadly  curse,  while 
to  him  who  accepts  it  in  humility  and  love,  a 
blessing  and  a  glory.  We  stand  on  scientific 
ground  here  if  anywhere.  The  facts  that  good 
food,  and  sleep,  and  exercise  produce  health, 
that  industry  and  economy  procure  wealth, 
that   kindness   and   self-forgetfulness   awaken 

165 


Hits  and  Misses 

love,  are  no  better  vouched  for  by  human  testi- 
mony than  that  there  is  an  invisible  something 
in  sorrow  that  engenders  blessing  to  him  who 
accepts  it  in  faith  and  humility. 

What  is  your  mental  attitude  toward  your 
own  sorrows?  Are  you  bearing  them  with 
fortitude  and  accepting  them  with  faith  ?  This 
is  what  God's  saints  have  always  done.  They 
saw  no  more  than  you  see.  The  potent  yeast 
was  just  as  indiscernible  to  them,  but  they  be- 
lieved. They  could  not  be  persuaded  that  sor- 
row in  its  nature  was  evil.  Nothing  could 
shake  their  faith  that  all  things  were  working 
together  for  good  to  them  that  loved  God? 
They  did  not  try  to  diminish  their  sorrows  by 
forgetfulness ;  but  they  ennobled  and  glorified 
them  with  confidence  and  hope.  They  suffered 
as  much  as  we;  they  saw  no  more  than  we, 
but  they  trusted  more  than  we. 

Let  us  cast  ourselves  upon  their  testimony. 
Let  us  hear  the  words  of  Christ  with  faith. 
Come  unto  Me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden,  and  /  will  give  you  rest!  He  bore  his 
own  sorrows  in  this  way,  and  he  knows  how  to 
teach  us  to  bear  ours. 

Is  it  not  plain,  then,  that  what  we  need  is 

faith  in  the  invisible?    What  will  become  of  us 

if  we  fret  and  worry  all  the  time  about  what 

the  wheels  are  doing  out  of  sight?     The  house- 

i66 


The  Sacred  Leaven  of  Sorrow 

wife  does  not  worry  about  the  yeast,  nor  the 
farmer  about  the  seed.  The  old  brown  leghorn 
hen  is  not  worrying  about  the  silent  and  invis- 
ible operations  of  incubation  as  she  sits  dozing 
over  her  eggs.  The  little  children  are  not 
worrying  about  the  invisible  processes  by  which 
their  Christmas  presents  are  being  prepared,  as 
they  lie  sweetly  slumbering  in  their  cribs.  You 
have  told  them  this  time,  as  you  tell  them 
always  (and  thank  God  you  can  never  persuade 
them)  that  times  are  hard,  and  they  must  not 
expect  many  presents.  They  just  go  off  to 
school  or  climb  into  their  little  cots  at  night 
with  a  sublime,  unclouded  faith  in  the  invisible. 
They  know  that  it  is  working  for  them.  All 
day  long  down  there  in  the  dusty  mill  or 
crowded  store  their  invisible  father  is  earning 
the  money  to  buy  their  dolls  and  sleds.  Late 
into  the  night,  by  the  light  of  the  flickering 
lamp,  their  mother  sits  stitching  and  stitching, 
and  the  old  grandmother  is  knitting  and  knit- 
ting, and  sister  is  dressing  the  dolly,  and 
brother  is  making  a  cradle,  and  the  fingers  of 
uncles  and  cousins  and  aunts  are  working  and 
working  while  their  dear  hearts  are  sleeping 
and  sleeping  and  dreaming  and  dreaming ! 

We  need  such  trust  as  this.     What  sorrow 
wants  to  do  her  perfect  work  in,  is  quiet,  restful 

hearts.     If  we  could  lie  in  our  nests  like  the 

167 


Hits  and  Misses 

eggs  and  let  the  Divine  Spirit  brood  upon  us, 
a  sweeter  life  would  dawn  within  us.  Let  us 
lie  more  quietly  in  the  hands  of  God.  Let  us 
think  less  of  the  visible  and  more  of  the  invisi- 
ble. Let  us  not  care  so  much  for  what  is 
going  on  upon  the  surface  as  what  is  being 
wrought  down  in  the  great  deeps. 

And  so  shall  we  see  that  these  light  afflictions 
which  are  but  for  a  moment  will  work  out  for 
us,  even  here,  the  most  strange  and  surprising 
results.  We  shall  find  that  they  give  us  a  new 
patience,  gentleness,  humility,  and  repose. 
They  will  bring  us  a  new  consideration  for 
others,  a  diviner  charity,  a  tenderer  sympathy. 
They  will  ripen  us  as  sun  and  sap  ripen  the 
fruit  on  the  tree  or  bring  the  plant  to  bloom. 

And  what  they  will  do  here — is  but  a  faint 
hint,  a  feeble  adumbration,  of  what  they  will 
accomplish  for  us  in  the  long  hereafter.  They 
will  work  out  for  us  a  far  more  exceeding  and 
eternal  weight  of  glory,  when  we  have  come 
up  out  of  our  great  tribulations. 


1 68 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 


"What  we  ardently  "wish  we  soon  believe" 

— Young. 

"Begin  by  regarding  everything  from  a  moral  point 
of  view  and  you  will  end  by  believing  in  God." 

— Thomas  Arnold. 

— "One  in  whom  persuasion  and  belief 

Had  ripened  into  faith,  and  faith  became 
A  passionate  intuition." 

— Wordsworth. 

"If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  man 
And  only  a  man,  I  say 
That  of  all  mankind  I  cleave  to  Him, 
And  to  Him  will  cleave  alway. 

"If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  God 
And  the  only  God,  I  swear 
I  will  follow  Him  through  heaven  and  hell, 
The  earth,  the  sea,  and  the  air." 


Jesus  said  unto  him:  If  thou  canst  believe— 
all  things  are  possible  to  him  that  believeth. 
And  straightzvay  the  father  of  the  child  cned 
out  and  said  with  tears— Lord,  I  believe,  help 
thou  mine  unbelief.— Mark  ix,  23-24. 

"I  would  give  all  that  I  possess  to  recover  my 
lost  faith/'  said  the  man,  and  heaved  a  prof omid 

sigh. 

I  shall  imagine  that  this  man,  and  all  who 
ever  uttered  this  complaint  and  heaved  this  sigh, 
are  seated  before  me,  and  shall  try  to  point  out 
the  fatal  misconception  of  the  capacities  of  the 
human  mind,  which  (according  to  my  own 
experience  and  observation)  lurks  traitorously 
in  that  wail  of  helplessness. 

You  have  lost  your  belief  in  the  great  doc- 
trines of  the  Christian  religion,  and  you  think 
you  have  no  power  to  recover  it.  That  is  to 
say,  you  do  not  believe  that  a  man  is  a  free 
moral  agent  in  the  realm  of  religious  faith. 
You  think  that  there  is  some  insuperable 
obstacle  which  prevents  you  from  believing  m 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  in  divine  Provi- 
dence, in  answer  to  prayer,  in  the  incarnation, 

171 


Hits  and  Misses 

etc.,  and  that  even  if  you  should  determine  to 
believe,  and  try  your  very  hardest  to  believe, 
you  could  not. 

Well,  I  meet  you  on  your  own  ground  and  tell 
you  frankly  that  I  do  not  think  you  understand 
the  operations  of  the  mind.  I  have  the  cour- 
age to  say  this  because  for  twenty  years  or 
more  on  account  of  a  natural  tendency  to  skep- 
ticism in  the  very  fibers  of  my  being,  I  have 
had  the  delicate  mechanism  of  my  soul  under 
my  eye,  as  a  jeweler,  with  his  glass  gripped 
under  his  beetling  brow,  has  a  broken  watch, 
in  the  light  of  some  sunny  southern  win- 
dow. I  have  watched  those  delicate  wheels 
go  round  and  round,  until  I  have  formed  a  cer- 
tain psychology  for  my  own  self  and  out  of 
my  own  reflection.  It  may  be  right  or  it  may 
be  wrong;  but  it  is  the  best  I  have;  it  is  my 
own,  and  it  has  served  me  in  many  a  rough 
place  on  the  journey,  and  such  as  I  have,  give 
I  thee. 

"If  thou  canst  believe,"  said  Jesus  to  the 
man.  "I  can,  I  will — help  thou  me" — he 
answered  as  if  he  saw  and  felt  that  in  the 
domain  of  religious  faith  as  nowhere  else — 
the  mind  moved  with  strange,  inviolable  free- 
dom. This  is  what  I  believe.  I  believe  that 
while  there  are  realms  in  which  the  mind  moves 
according  to  an  inviolable  necessity  in  accept- 

172 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

ing  or  rejecting  conceptions  presented  to  it — 
in  the  realm  of  religious  ideas — it  moves  in  an 
inviolable  freedom,  and  that  any  honest  man 
who  sincerely  wants  to  believe  in  the  Christian 
religion  can  be  shown  that  he  is  free  to  do  so. 

Let  us  examine  some  of  these  mysterious 
operations  of  our  minds. 

A.  In  the  first  place  in  the  realm  of  the  ma- 
terial elements  which  lie  about  us,  and  con- 
stitute the  immediate  environment  of  our  lives, 
we  have  no  freedom  at  all  (or  only  the  most 
narrow  margin)  as  to  what  we  must  believe 
about  its  existence  and  relation  to  us. 

Matter  is  real.  It  impinges  upon  us.  It  is 
something  not  ourselves.  Fire  burns,  frost 
bites,  lightnings  flash,  thunders  peal,  birds  sing, 
flowers  bestow  a  perfume.  Night  falls.  Day 
dawns.  Sickness  makes  flesh  quiver.  Death 
stalks  in,  touches  the  brow,  and  all  is  over ! 

Doubt  these  facts  if  you  can !  Offer  a  man 
a  million  dollars  if  he  will  doubt  a  single  item, 
and  laugh  at  him  while  he  wriggles  and  twists 
with  the  most  violent  but  futile  efforts  of  his 
will !  The  intellect  is  as  helpless  as  a  fish 
frozen  in  a  block  of  ice!  Now  and  then  a 
crack-brained  philosopher,  shut  up  in  a  closet 
with  a  few  books  and  a  tallow  candle,  persuades 
himself  that  he  believes  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  world  of  matter  outside  his  own  soul.     At 

173 


Hits  and  Misses 

intervals  recurring  with  suspicious  regularity, 
a  sect  springs  up  which  denies  the  reality  of 
pain  and  persuades  itself,  that  all  suffering  is  in 
the  imagination.  But  a  goat  butts  the  phi- 
losopher or  a  cramp  seizes  the  Christian  Scien- 
tist and  crash !  The  world  rolls  in  upon  the  soul 
with  its  indubitable  and  irresistible  evidence 
of  itself.  Doubt  it  we  cannot.  Believe  it  we 
must.  It  is  no  matter  of  choice,  but  of  in- 
violable necessity. 

B,  In  the  second  place  the  mind  sometimes 
works  under  the  same  inviolable  necessity  in 
the  realm  of  ideas — of  abstract  thought — as  for 
example,  in  regard  to  axiomatic  or  intuitional 
truths.  A  man  is  no  more  free  to  disbelieve 
that  two  bodies  cannot  occupy  the  same  place 
at  the  same  time,  than  he  is  to  have  his  head 
both  in  his  hat  and  out  of  it,  when  he  takes  it 
off  to  a  lad}^ !  It  would  be  a  very  amusing 
thing  to  watch  the  antics  of  a  soul  which  was 
trying  to  believe  that  things  which  were  equal 
to  the  same  thing  were  not  equal  to  each  other. 

Nor  is  the  inviolable  necessity  by  which  the 
mind  is  forced  to  accept  certain  ideas  confined 
to  the  realm  of  the  intuitions  alone.  It  takes  a 
long  time  for  a  boy  to  grasp  that  remorseless 
system  of  logical  inferences  by  which  it  is 
proven  that  a  square  constructed  upon  the 
hypothenuse  of  a  right  angled  triangle,  is  equal 

174 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

to  the  sum  of  the  squares  on  the  other  two  sides. 
But  as  each  step  of  the  process  is  slowly  dis- 
closed to  him,  he  is  compelled  to  take  it !  His 
mind  may  hold  back  and  struggle,  but  it  has 
to  go!  A  conscript  was  never  forced  into 
the  army,  nor  a  thief  dragged  to  jail,  nor  a 
man  swept  over  Niagara  by  any  more  resistless 
power  than  this  little  tow-headed,  tear-stained 
Euclid  is  pulled  and  hauled  to  the  conclusion  of 
those  resistless  processes  of  thought.  He  has 
about  as  much  freedom  tO'  go  his  own  way  as 
an  owl  in  the  talons  of  a  flying  eagle,  or  a  lamb 
in  the  jaws  of  a  hungry  lioness  hurrying  home 
to  her  cubs. 

A  mind  without  such  necessities  and  certain- 
ties, would  be  about  as  useful  as  a  watch  whose 
wheels  moved  at  their  own  sweet  will.  It  is 
this  fixed  necessity  in  its  operation  that  makes 
the  mind  an  instrument  capable  of  the  discovery 
of  truth. 

C.  In  the  third  place — the  mind  operates  by 
these  same  kinds  of  necessities  in  still  another 
realm,  although  the  margin  of  freedom  begins 
to  widen  here,  and  the  line  outside  of  which  it  is 
exercised,  is  by  no  means  so  easily  discerned. 
I  refer  to  the  realm  of  scientific  and  historical 
knowledge,  etc.  The  laws  which  govern  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge  in  these  realms  are 
very  obscure  or  at  least  aifficult  of  comprehen- 

175 


Hits  and  Misses 

sion  by  the  unlearned.  The  science  of  logic  is 
to  most  men  as  unfamiliar  and  repulsive  as 
Sanscrit,  but  those  who  know  it  well,  behold 
the  human  intellect  moving  under  laws  and 
principles  as  fixed  as  those  of  the  planets.  The 
soul  in  the  grip  of  a  syllogism  is  no  less  helpless 
than  the  kid  in  the  grip  of  an  anaconda. 
Everywhere,  and  in  all  circumstances,  all  men, 
whether  they  know  it  or  not,  are  being  passed 
along  from  the  hands  of  major  and  minor 
premises  to  conclusions,  with  as  resistless  cer- 
tainty as  grains  of  wheat  are  being  passed 
through  upper  and  nether  millstones  into  flour 
bags.  There  are  vast  tracts  and  regions  of 
facts  and  laws  and  principles  of  life  where 
truths  are  not  yet  discovered  and  arranged,  in 
which  there  is  room  enough  for  difference  of 
opinion,  and  for  the  freest  and  most  indepen- 
dent choice  of  widely  contrasted  alternatives. 
The  evidences  for  and  against  "expansion,"  or 
socialism,  or  Darwinianism,  and  ten  thousand 
other  things,  are  either  not  clearly  understood, 
or  are  not  equally  accessible  to  all  men — ^and 
there  remains  for  them  the  widest  possible 
latitude  for  choice  or  for  uncertainty.  But 
there  come  times  in  the  evolution  of  ideas  when 
this  freedom  no  longer  exists.  Let  a  man  try 
to  disbelieve  the  laws  of  Kepler,  or  the  Coperni- 
can  theory  of  the   Sidereal   universe,   or  the 

176 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  U^ill  Believe 

reality  of  the  French  Revolution  or  the  actual 
existence  of  such  men  as  Charlemagne  or 
Caesar  or  Alexander  the  Great !  What  power 
does  the  mind  possess  to  do  so?  It  can  no 
more  doubt  these  facts  than  it  can  disbelieve 
what  it  does  believe. 

Nor  has  it  any  more  power  to  restore  a  faith 
which  it  has  once  lost  in  this  realm !  Science 
has  made  it  as  impossible  to  believe  in  witches 
and  fairies  as  it  has  made  it  necessary  to  beheve 
in  electricity  and  bacteria!  Now,  let  a  man 
attempt  to  regain  his  faith  in  the  gods  of  Rome, 
or  Fawns  and  Satyrs  of  Ancient  Greece.  He 
cannot !  The  will  has  no  power  in  this  domain. 
He  may  want  to.  It  may  seem  to  him  that 
such  a  life  of  constant  intercourse  with  the 
spirits  that  haunted  the  woods  and  fountains 
of  ancient  Hellas,  would  be  the  sweetest  and 
most  desirable  in  the  world.  But  he  cannot 
live  it !  He  cannot  by  any,  even  the  most  pro- 
tracted or  violent  effort  of  his  free  choice,  com- 
pel his  disbelieving  mind  to  cherish  those  im- 
possible faiths. 

Now,  this  will  serve  to  indicate  to  you  that 
when  I  say  that  a  man  can  believe  in  the  Chris- 
tian religion  if  he  wishes  to,  I  do  not  ignore 
the  essential  laws  of  thought,  and,  if  it  could 
be  shown  that  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  be- 
longed to  any  or  all  of  the  same  classes  of  ideas 

177 


Hits  and  Misses 

as  those  which  have  now  been  passed  in  review, 
I  should  be  compelled  to  admit,  that  if  some 
scientific  evidence  had  affected  them  as  it  has 
affected  the  myths  of  ancient  Greece,  and  you 
had  thus  lost  your  faith — it  would  be  irrational 
and  foolish  to  tell  you  that  you  could  believe 
them  again  if  you  wanted  to. 

But  I  wish  to  point  out  to  you  that  these 
essential  doctrines  of  Christianity  relate  to  facts 
and  questions  lying  in  a  domain  so  different 
that  the  mind  is  compelled  to  deal  with  them 
by  a  different  set  of  faculties  altogether. 

It  is  plain  then,  that  there  are  realms  of 
thought  w^here  the  mind  has  no  freedom  to 
choose  its  beliefs,  but  has  them  forced  upon  it 
irresistibly.  And  it  is  equally  plain  that  it  is 
only  in  the  realms  where  absolute  knowledge  is 
impossible,  that  any  true  freedom  as  to  belief 
exists.  What  we  know  we  must  believe.  Con- 
cerning that  about  which  we  only  conjecture, 
we  may  believe  what  we  choose. 

Have  you  ever  seen  an  ant  caught  upon  a 
leaf  which  has  floated  out  into  a  lake?  And 
have  you  watched  it  dart  from  one  side  to 
another,  reaching  the  edge  and  looking  out 
upon  that  boundless  expanse  of  void  and 
illimitable  waters?  So  the  soul  darts  back 
and  forth  across  the  little  island  of  the  known 


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He  Can  Believe,  Who  JVill  Believe 

facts  of  life  and  looks  over  into  the  profound 
abysses  of  the  infinite  and  unknown. 

What  Hes  upon  its  island  it  has  no  choice 
about  believing.  But  concerning  what  lies  over 
the  edge,  it  dreams  and  hopes  and  exercises 
faith  !  In  that  realm  it  exercises  choice.  Every 
man  in  reality  does  believe,  that  which  he  pre- 
fers to  believe — about  the  unknown  elements  of 
life. 

I  say  then  that  the  objects  upon  which  you 
declare  you  cannot  now  fix  your  faith,  lie  in  a 
domain  which  science  has  never  yet  touched ! 
Thev  have  tl.us  far  remained  incapable  of  either 
absolute  proof  or  disproof.  They  have  so 
lurked  in  the  sacred  shadows  that  the  most 
which  we  have  ever  succeeded  in  doing  so  far 
as  any  scientific  and  experimental  knowledge 
is  concerned,  is  to  point  out  an  almost  equally 
balanced  group  of  evidences  for  and  against 
them. 

What  I  now  affirm  then,  is  this — a  man 
standing  between  these  opposing  and  contradic- 
tory masses  of  evidence,  is  free  (inviolably 
free)  to  choose  the  side  which  his  heart,  his 
hope,  his  aspiration  prompt  him  to! 

To  set  this  fact  before  you  in  a  light  as  clear 
as  that  of  day,  will  be  my  effort  now. 

I.  The  first  great  fundamental  object  in 
which  I  affirm  that  you  may  re-establish  your 

179 


Hits  and  Misses 

lost  faith  if  you  wish  to,  is  the  existence 
of  your  soul.  I  affirm  that  its  existence  is 
not  to  be  proven  or  disproven  in  the  same  way 
as  any  of  these  other  objects  of  knowledge  or 
at  least  not  with  the  same  sort  of  demonstrative 
and  irresistible  evidence. 

You  cannot  touch,  taste  or  handle  your  soul. 
If  you  know  it  by  intuition  (as  I  believe  you 
do)  you  cannot  test  your  intuition  by  experi- 
ment as  you  can  prove  that  two  bodies  cannot 
occupy  the  same  space  at  the  same  time. 

Nor  can  you  demonstrate  its  existence  or  its 
non-existence  by  logical  syllogisms,  nor  by 
acids  in  a  laboratory ! 

The  proofs  and  disproofs  are  all  drawn  from 
a  realm  of  either  abstract  reasoning  or  unveri- 
fiable  intuitions,  and  in  all  ages  of  the  world 
have  been  arrayed  against  each  other  in  masses 
so  nearly  equal  that  the  minds  of  men  have 
oscillated  between  them  like  a  pendulum. 

One  thing  at  least  is  certain,  and  nothing  is 
more  certain !  It  is  that  the  existence  and  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  has  never  been  disproven! 
By  what  evidence  could  it  be?  Show  us  your 
disproof,  if  you  can !  Demonstrate.  You 
may  persuade  one  man,  a  few  men,  many  men ! 
But  I  ask  for  demonstration!  By  the  nature  of 
the  case,  demonstration  is  impossible.     Science 

so  far,  has  never  transcended  the  domain  of  the 

1 80 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

material,  and  by  the  supposition,  spirit  is  imma- 
terial !  You  will  as  soon  prove  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  gas,  because  gas  is  not  a  solid,  as 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  soul,  because  soul 
is  not  matter! 

We  have  disproven  witches  and  fairies,  be- 
cause men  said  they  were  objects  of  ocular 
vision.  But  who  says  the  soul  is?  We  say  it 
is  not!     And  so  it  belongs  to  a  different  realm. 

I  ask  you  therefore  whether  you  cannot  be- 
lieve in  it  if  you  zvant  to  ?  What  hinders  you  ? 
Not  proof.  Not  demonstration !  You  are 
therefore  free  to  choose  between  these  two 
opposing  views.  And  if  you  ever  do  decide,  it 
must  be  because  you  do  choose.  Forced  you 
cannot  be.  I  can  be  forced  to  disbelieve  in 
fairies,  but  I  would  like  to  see  you  force  me 
to  disbelieve  in  my  soul !  You  may  mass  all 
your  serried  ranks  of  skeptics  behind  all  libra- 
ries and  laboratories  on  the  two  hemispheres 
and  I  will  not  budge  an  inch,  because  you  can- 
not furnish  proof !  And  so  because  I  want  to 
believe  I  will  believe! 

2.  The  second  great  fundamental  object  in 
which  I  say  that  you  can  believe  if  you  want  to, 
is  a  personal  God  a  loving  Heavenly  Father? 
What,  I  ask  you,  has  made  it  impossible  for  you 
to  believe  in  Him  if  you  wish  to?     Who  has 

disproven  his  existence  ?     I  do  not  ask  you  who 

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Hits  and  Misses 

asserted  his  non-existence.  I  know  who  that 
was.  He  lived  many  centuries  ago,  has  never 
died,  is  living  yet,  his  name  is  Fool !  And 
every  man  who  says  there  is  no  God,  is,  by  the 
very  necessity  of  the  case,  a  Fool !  for  he  asserts 
a  universal  negative !  How  does  he  know 
there  is  no  God  ?  He  may  have  traversed  the 
milky  way  on  foot  or  have  taken  the  wings 
of  the  morning  and  flown  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  space,  and  when  his  wings  have  melted  in 
some  last  central  sun,  and  head  and  heart  failed 
him,  he  may  have  just  then  touched  the  outer 
hem  of  His  garment !  Prove  that  there  is  no 
God !  You  have  no  proof.  I  can  believe  in 
Him  if  I  want  to.     I  do.     I  will. 

3.  In  the  third  place,  I  instance  Providence 
and  prayer.  If  you  want  to  believe  in  them 
why  do  you  notf  Who  has  proven  that  there 
is  no  Providence  and  that  prayer  does  not 
avail?  I  may  not  prove  there  is  and  that  it 
does.  But  my  inability  to  prove  the  affirmative 
is  not  your  ability  to  prove  the  negative !  If  I 
want  to  believe  that  there  is  an  ear  that  hears 
my  prayer  and  a  hand  that  guides  my  wander- 
ing feet,  you  can  no  more  prove  to  me  that  they 
do  not,  than  you  can  prove  that  a  mother  does 
not  receive  a  telepathic  message  from  a  dying 
boy,  or  that  when  she  has  died,  she  does  not 

hover  round  her  child ! 

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He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

4.  In  the  fourth  place,  there  is  no  impossi- 
bility of  your  believing  in  the  incarnation  of 
God  in  Christ.  And  here  we  must  take  care! 
We  must  divide  this  subject  to  conquer  it. 
The  problem  of  belief  in  Jesus  Christ  as  a  man 
and  a  God  must  be  clearly  differentiated. 
There  is  no  more  doubt  in  any  one's  mind  who 
has  any  capacity  to  judge,  that  Jesus  Christ 
lived  the  holy  life  and  died  the  sacred  death 
which  he  is  said  to  have  Hved  and  died  than 
that  the  sun  rises  and  sets.  We  believe  it  by 
an  inviolable  necessity.  We  could  not  with- 
hold our  credence  from  this  fact  if  we  should 
try.     The  stones  would  cry  out  against  us ! 

But  you  enter  another  domain  when  you  ask 
whether  his  nature  was  that  of  a  God !  Here 
we  pass  beyond  the  possibility  of  demonstrative 
evidence  at  a  single  bound !  Prophecy  can 
make  it  credible,  and  it  has,  but  cannot  demon- 
strate it.  Miracles  may  render  it  probable,  and 
they  do,  but  cannot  prove  it.  The  belief  of  his 
friends  may  lend  it  the  highest  likelihood. 
His  own  wonderful  self-consciousness  may  lift 
that  likelihood  many  degrees  toward  moral  cer- 
tainty ;  but  still,  still,  we  are  moving  in  a  domain 
where  scientific  evidence  cannot  touch  the  heart 
of  the  mysterv.  If  a  skeptic  asserts  that 
prophecies  might  have  been  coincidences, 
miracles  might  have  been  the  result  of  human 

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Hits  and  Misses 

knowledge  raised  to  a  higher  power — friends 
might  be  deceived  and  even  the  clear  self-con- 
sciousness of  Jesus  a  delusion — where  will  you 
go  for  disproof f  If  all  these  evidences  rolled 
together  do  not  demonstrate  (and  they  never 
have),  then  demonstration  appears  to  be  im- 
possible. 

The  evidence  for  and  against  the  divinity  of 
Jesus  masses  itself  up  on  each  side  of  the  soul 
like  great  cliffs  full  of  magnetic  power,  and  the 
soul  drawn  by  one  and  then  the  other  vibrates 
and  fluctuates  between  them. 

There,  in  those  terrible  oscillations  of  uncer- 
tainty, as  I  fled  from  one  to  the  other  of  those 
piles  of  argument  which  had  been  accumulated 
during  the  ages,  the  conviction  came  clear 
enough  to  me,  that  neither  would  irresistibly 
draw  me  to  itself,  and  that  I  must  deliberately 
choose  between  them !  I  could  see  as  clear 
as  daylight,  that  whichever  one  I  chose,  I 
could  find  arguments  enough  to  sustain  me ! 
But  that  if  I  waited  to  be  irresistibly  impelled 
to  one  or  other,  I  should  wait  until  death  stole 
up  and  closed  my  eyes — and  so,  I  chose !  And 
nothing  in  the  nature  of  the  evidence  against 
the  claims  of  Jesus  made  it  impossible  for  me  to 
choose !  It  has  never  been  disproven  that  Jesus 
was  the  Son  o^  God !     How   can  it  be  ?     It 

might  be  rendered  very  improbable;  but  how 

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He  Can  Believe,  Who  JVill  Believe 

could  it  be  made  certain?  What  kind  of  evi- 
dence would  do  it  ?  Every  human  being  in  the 
world  might  come  to  a  unanimous  and  undi- 
vided decision  that  he  was  only  a  man — and  yet 
be  wrong.  The  whole  world  stood  out  against 
Galilleo  and  yet  the  astronomer  was  right ! 

My  friend,  it  is  not  here  that  the  obstacle  to 
your  faith  is  to  be  found !  You  say  that  you 
cannot  believe  if  you  try.  Well,  at  least,  the 
impossibility  does  not  lie  in  the  evidence.  But 
if  it  does  not  lie  in  the  evidence — then  you  are 
free  to  believe  it  if  you  will!  And  that  is  what 
I  said  at  the  outset !  I  said  there  was  nothing 
to  prevent  your  recovering  your  faith  if  you 
really  want  to.  And  is  it  not  right  here  that 
you  are  under  a  strong  delusion  and  a  lie? 
When  you  do  not  succeed  in  "believing,"  you 
think  that  science  has  put  forth  evidences  that 
make  faith  impossible,  while  in  reality  the  diffi- 
culty is  not  in  the  credibility  of  the  doctrines, 
but  in  some  inertia  and  indifference  in  the  mind 
which  examines  them ! 

This  is  a  vastly  different  thing. 

Let  me  illustrate  these  different  relationships 
of  the  soul  moving  without  volition  toward 
irresistible  evidence,  and  oscillating  freely  be- 
tween opposingly  attractive  ideas. 

Two  steel  castles  stand  on  opposite  sides  of 
an  artificial  lake.     A  little  iron  vessel  floats 

185 


Hits  and  Misses 

between  them,  and  suddenly  turns  and  swims 
toward  the  castle  which  is  charged  with  an 
irresistible  magnetic  force. 

This  is  the  mind  of  man  swayed  beyond  its 
own  control  by  demonstrable  truth. 

But  the  soul  moving  freely  and  independ- 
ently between  the  realms  of  atheism,  skeptic- 
ism, materialism,  and  those  of  God  and  Christ 
and  immortality  and  Providence,  free  to  attach 
itself  to  whichever  it  prefers,  is  the  humming- 
bird moving  upon  unfettered  wings  between  a 
honeysuckle  and  a  deadly  upas  tree ! 

If  the  arguments  for  Christianity  were  so 
irresistible  that  the  soul  would  be  forced  to 
accept  one  side  or  the  other  by  the  same  sort  of 
necessity  that  it  is  forced  to  believe  that  twice 
two  are  four — there  would  be  no  test  or  proba- 
tion of  the  soul. 

The  question  is  an  open  one,  and  we  are  told 
to  choose.  And  what  I  affirm  is,  that  men  are 
not  kept  from  accepting  Christianity  because  it 
is  intrinsically  improbable,  but  because  their 
souls  are  filled  with  so  much  weakness  and 
worldliness,  that  when  they  come  to  try  to 
attach  themselves  to  these  sublime  faiths,  they 
have  not  the  grip  to  hold  on !  Of  course  you 
would  believe  if  you  could  not  help  it.  The 
point  is,  to  believe  when  you  can  help  it. 

The  difficulty  then  is  not  in  the  weakness  of 

i86 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  IVill  Believe 

the  evidence,  but  the  weakness  of  the  soul  itself. 
There  is  proof  enough  to  satisfy  the  soul  that 
chooses  to  accept  it.  It  is  upon  this  point  that 
I  insist.  We  have  lost  soul  power  to  cling  to 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  and  we 
say  that  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good 
have  lost  power  to  hold  its!  It  is  a  delusion  as 
old  and  as  subtle  as  life  itself.  We  lose  our 
relish  for  food,  and  accuse  it  of  losing  its  taste. 
We  lose  our  S3nsitiveness  to  sound,  and  to 
color,  and  accuse  them  of  losing  their  charm. 
We  become  cynical  and  sour  and  accuse  men  of 
losing  their  integrity  and  honor.  We  relax  our 
moral  principles  and  accuse  virtue  and  honor 
of  losing  their  majesty.  We  permit  the  hope 
and  joy  of  our  souls  to  die  within  us,  and 
accuse  the  world  of  permitting  its  glory  to  pass 
away. 

The  hand  relaxes  its  hold  on  the  rope  and 
accuses  the  anchor  of  losing  its  grip  on  the 
bottom ! 

In  exactly  the  same  way,  too  many  of  us  have 
permitted  the  fascinations  or  the  sorrows  of  life 
to  dim  our  spiritual  sight,  to  dull  our  spiritual 
hearing,  and  then  blamed  the  other  world  for 
losing  its  reality  and  its  power.  The  soul  has 
not  lost  the  evidence  of  its  own  existence,  but 
we  have  lost  our  sensitiveness  to  that  evidence. 
God  does  not  shine  less  clearly,  but  we  have 

187 


Hits  and  Misses 

permitted  our  eyes  to  be  closed.  Providence 
and  prayer  are  as  real  and  available,  but  we 
have  grown  unobservant  and  untrustful ! 
Jesus  Christ  stands  out  before  the  world  in  all 
his  pristine  splendor  and  divinity,  but  our  hearts 
have  lost  their  throb  and  our  spirits  their 
hunger !  The  sun  has  not  disappeared  from  the 
heaven !     The  eye  has  suffered  an  eclipse ! 

If  we  really  want  to  believe  in  the  objects  of 
our  faith,  they  are  all  within  our  reach  to-day. 
They  have  not  altered !  What  we  need  (and 
only  need)  is  the  passion  in  our  souls  to  attach 
ourselves  to  them !  Everywhere  multitudes 
are  letting  go  their  hold  on  all  that  is  worth 
clinging  to ;  but  while  they  throw  up  their  weak 
hands  and  go  down  into  the  vast  deeps  of  de- 
spair and  sin,  here  and  there  some  brave  soul 
hangs  on !  The  whole  race  may  abandon  God, 
but  Noah  will  cling  to  him  until  the  floods 
have  come  and  gone.  All  Sodom  may  let  go, 
but  Lot  never!  What  difference  did  it  make 
to  Daniel  that  other  men  thought  that  Jehovah 
had  expired  in  the  heavens  above  the  sacked 
Jerusalem.  He  never  lost  his  faith !  Not 
another  soul  on  the  hill  of  sacrifice  felt  the  pres- 
ence of  the  eternal  God  save  Elijah,  but  he 
felt  him !  To  the  stupid  masses  in  Jerusalem 
the  spiritual  had  ceased  to  be  real,  but  not  for 


188 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

Jesus  Christ!  What  they  saw  nowhere  he 
beheld  everywhere! 

It  is  right  here,  my  friends,  that  there  slowly 
unfolds  tO'  us  the  guilty  secret  of  our  unfaith. 
Our  souls  themselves  have  lost  their  love  and 
aspiration,  and  not  as  we  vainly  and  sinfully 
delude  ourselves,  the  Christian  religion  its 
vitality  and  its  evidence !  If  it  had,  I  would 
not  reproach  you !  But  it  has  not !  Those 
sublime  truths  have  lost  none  of  their  rol- 
ling and  resounding  sweetness.  Christ  has 
parted  with  no  whit  of  that  divinity  which 
kindled  in  the  souls  of  the  Apostles  and 
the  martyrs  that  passion  of  love  and  devotion. 
Instead  of  losing  its  attractive  power — like  a 
magnet  recruiting  its  stores  from  some  invisible 
source — this  sublime  doctrine  has  steadily 
grown  more  seductive  and  entrancing  to  all 
whose  souls  were  ready  to  receive  it. 

Do  not  solace  yourself  by  saying  that  it  is  no 
longer  credible !  It  is  you  who  are  no  longer 
receptive!  Your  soul  has  lost  its  tenderness, 
its  aspiration,  its  desire.  You  could  believe  if 
you  wanted  to.     But  you  do  not  I 

To  me,  with  every  passing  year  this  indiffer- 
ence to  God  seems  more  terrible !  I  see  more 
and  more  clearly  what  tragedies  lie  in  store  for 
souls  that  do  not  love  the  light  and  feed  upon 
the  bread  of  God !     Each  new  experience  of  the 

189 


Hits  and  Misses 

power  of  the  soul  to  part  with  its  capacities,  and 
to  suffer  the  atrophy  of  its  sublime  organs,  fills 
me  with  a  new  horror.  Who  knows  at  what 
moment  and  in  what  critical  experiences  it  will 
pass  a  line  beyond  which  it  can  never  recover 
its  lost  capacity.  Suppose  that  this  deadly 
wasting  away  of  your  power  to  believe  in  and 
appropriate  the  spiritual  should  be  consum- 
mated to-day!  And  that  after  this  morning 
hour,  you  should  have  passed  a  line  which 
terminated  your  capability  of  being  developed 
into  a  seraph  or  some  higher  form  of  life ! 

Does  that  seem  preposterous? 

Then  come  with  me  and  open  the  top  of  this 
bee  hive.  In  those  cells  are  the  embryos  of 
the  future  generations  of  bees.  There  is 
absolutely  no  difference  whatever  between  the 
eggs  from  which  the  workers  and  the  queens 
are  produced.  You  may  select  any  two  of 
them  and  it  will  be  a  matter  of  indifference 
which  you  name  for  the  Empress  of  this  tiny 
realm.  It  is  all  a  question  of  environment  and 
nutrition.  In  order  to  develop  a  queen,  the 
workers  remove  the  partitions  of  the  adjoining 
cells,  surround  the  larva  by  more  extended  ones, 
and  feed  it  an  abundance  of  rich  food  called 
royal  jelly!  The  die  is  cast!  Out  of  the  po- 
tential embryo  royalty  has  emerged.  But  the 
period  in  which  this  queenly  potentiality  exists 

190 


He  Can  Believe,  Who  Will  Believe 

is  a  limited  one !  There  comes  a  critical  hour, 
after  which  the  larva  is  hopelessly  and  forever 
a  worker!  Nothing  can  alter  its  destiny  now! 
Sun,  moon,  stars,  flowers,  a  colony  of  4,000,000 
bees,  all  toil  in  vain.  The  deadly  line  of  pro- 
bation has  been  crossed. 

And  it  was  all  a  question  of  nourishment — 
of  royal  food !  Who  knows  but  it  is  so  with 
us  ?  Who  knows  but  there  is  a  fatal  hour,  and 
after  it  an  impossibility  of  change.  Are  the 
functions  and  capacities  of  a  man  any  less  deli- 
cately adjusted,  think  you,  than  those  of  a 
honey  bee  ?  Who  of  us  can  measure  the  critical 
nature  of  this  experience  through  which  we  are 
passing?  If  these  souls  of  ours  may  be  thus 
nournished  by  truth  and  love  and  hope,  if  there 
may  be  some  delicate  and  subtle  transmutation 
dependent  upon  the  food  we  take,  then  I  for  one 
cry  out.  Oh,  God,  enlarge  my  cell  and  feed  me 
with  the  bread  of  life ! 

I  do  not  exaggerate  the  seriousness  of  life! 
I  have  no  power  to  put  it  up  before  you  in  a 
thousandth  part  of  its  gravity !  There  is  a 
warning  word  that  gleams  through  every  page 
of  scripture  and  rings  through  every  tragedy  of 
human  life,  "Too  late,"  "Too  late!" 

We  know  not  all  it  means.  Its  entire  sig- 
nificance is  not  disclosed ;  but  he  is  no  alarmist 
who  resolutely  tells  a  company  of  pilgrims  who 

191 


Hits  and  Misses 

pause  a  while  to  hear  the  message  of  his  heart, 
*'You  may  not  trifle  with  your  souls !"  And 
I  declare  to  you  to-day,  that  if  you  find  your 
faith  slipping  away  from  you — you  must  get  it 
back !  You  must  not  and  cannot  live  without 
it.  The  soul  is  just  as  real,  God  is  just  as 
real,  Providence  and  prayer  are  just  as  real, 
and  Jesus  Christ  is  just  as  real  as  when  John 
and  Paul  and  Luther  and  Knox  and  Edwards 
grasped  them  in  the  arms  of  faith.  You,  too, 
can  believe.  You  are  as  free  as  they !  You 
are  no  different  from  the  man  in  our  story 
text,  except  that  he  was  desperately  in  earnest. 
If  you  were  as  in  earnest  as  he,  there  would  be 
no  trouble.  Lord,  I  believe,  he  cried,  help 
thou  my  unbelief.  God  did  help.  God  will 
help.  He  always  opens  to  those  who  knock 
and  he  is  always  found  of  him  who  seeks ! 


192 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 


"The   groves   were    God's   first    temples.     Ere    man 

learned 
To  hew  the  shaft,  and  lay  the  architrave, 
And  spread  the  roof  above  them — ere  he  framed 
The  lofty  vault  to  gather  and  roll  hack 
The  sound  of  anthems;   in  the  darkling  wood, 
Amidst  the  cool  and  silence,  he  knelt  down 
And  offered  to  the  Mightiest  solemn  thanks 
And  supplication." 

— Bryant. 

"God  is  not  to  he  worshiped  with  sacrifices  and 
blood:  for  what  pleasure  can  He  have  in  the  slaughter 
of  the  innocent?  but  with  a  pure  mind,  a  good  and 
honest  purpose.  Temples  are  not  to  he  built  for  Him 
with  stones  piled  on  high.  God  is  to  he  consecrated 
in  the  breast  of  each." 

— Seneca. 

"One  thing  have  I  desired  of  the  Lord,  that  will  I 
seek  after:  that  I  may  dwell  in  the  house  of  the 
Lord  all  the  days  of  my  life,  to  behold  the  beauty  of 
the  Lord  and  to  inquire  in  His  temple." 

— Psalm. 


Address  at  dedication  of  the  Avondale  Pres- 
byterian Church,  October  2,  i8p8: 

It  is  as  much  the  obHgation  of  a  human 
organization  as  of  a  human  organism,  to  reflect 
upon  its  deeds. 

Now  that  we  have  with  much  expenditure  of 
effort,  of  money,  and  of  devotion  erected  this 
beautiful  building,  it  will  be  becoming  in  us  to 
inquire  whether  what  we  have  done  can  be 
justified  at  the  bar  of  reason,  or  is  only  one 
more  mysterious  act  in  that  endless  train  of 
inexplicable  operations  which  are  prompted  by 
the  restlessness,  the  vanity,  the  ignorance,  or 
the  superstition  of  man. 

In  building  this  sacred  edifice  (which  we  are 
now  to  dedicate  to  the  worship  of  that  divine 
being  of  whose  nature  Jesus  Christ  has  given 
us  the  fullest  revelation),  I  shall  argue  that  we 
have  obeyed  a  natural  and  irrepressible  instinct 
of  the  human  soul,  and  are  therefore  justified 
in  our  toil  and  self-denial. 

And  because  I  wish  to  make  this  argument 
irrefragible  and  convincing,  I  will  base  it  upon 
the  following  proposition : 

195 


Hits  and  Misses 

Whatever  men  in  all  or  almost  all  ages  and 
places  and  circumstances  have  been  accustomed 
to  do,  possesses  a  certain  sacredness,  and  would 
appear  to  be  prompted  by  some  indestructible 
necessity  of  their  very  nature.  Their  deeds 
may  have  been  coarse,  vulgar,  and  even  wicked ; 
but  this  would  seem  to  prove  that  a  good  in- 
stinct had  been  corrupted  and  perverted  rather 
than  that  they  had  been  trying  to  give  expres- 
sion to  a  feeling  and  a  desire  which  were  bad  in 
themselves. 

If  in  almost  all  ages,  places,  and  circum- 
stances then,  there  has  been  some  power  operat- 
ing upon  the  minds  of  men  which  has  impelled 
them  to  rear  altars  and  shrines  and  temples — 
it  would  seem  as  safe  to  infer  that  it  was  as 
much  an  integral  part  of  their  nature  to  do  this 
(and  that  if  it  were  rightly  done  it  were  well 
done),  as  to  infer  that  because  everywhere  and 
in  all  ages  beavers  have  built  dams,  birds  nests, 
bees  honey-combs,  and  coral  insects  islands, 
it  was  a  proper  and  holy  function  of  their 
natures  so  to  do. 

And    so   the   golden   thread   that   will    run 

through  the  warp  and  woof  of  this  discourse 

wnll  be  the  idea,  that  it  is  as  much  a  function 

of  man  to  build  temples,  as  of  the  spider  to 

weave  a  web,  or  the  worm  a  cocoon — and  that 

as  he  always  has  done  it,  he  always  will  do  it, 

196 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

and  that  in  his  performance  of  this  act  he  is 
conscionslv  or  unconsciously  fulfilling  one  of 
the  ends  of  his  being. 

If  there  is,  then,  something  sacred  and 
beautiful  in  what  the  birds  are  doing  in  trees 
and  insects  in  the  ground  or  air,  there  is  some- 
thing unspeakably  more  beautiful  in  what  every 
colony  of  men,  women,  and  children  do,  when, 
prompted  by  this  divine  and  holy  impulse,  they 
gather  together  the  crude  materials  that  lie 
strewn  about  them,  carve,  decorate,  and  polish 
them,  and  with  their  transforming  touch  make 
them  ''suffer  a  sea  change  into  that  something 
new  and  strange," — a  graceful  and  beautiful 
temple  of  worship. 

And  so  if  there  has  entered  this  portal  some 
proud  man,  whose  mission  it  is  to  scoff,  let  him 
go  forth  into  the  open  air  and  scoff  at  those  tiny 
architects  who  in  earth  and  air  and  sea,  are 
obeying  the  summons  of  that  divine  Being  who 
has  called  them  into  life,  and  are  decorating  the 
world  with  those  delicate  and  beautiful  struc- 
tures which  it  is  their  mission  to  create  and 
ours  to  admire. 

Come,  then !     Stand  here  upon  this  vantage 

ground,  and  let  me  with  the  wand  of  history 

summon  the  generations  of  the  dead  back  from 

their  eternal  repose,  to  the  structural  activities 

of  their  busy  lives.     Look  thou,  on  them ! 

197 


Hits  and  Misses 

It  is  a  proof  that  the  aboriginal  tribes  of  our 
own  native  land  had  never  attained  a  high  state 
of  culture  or  advancement,  that  they  are  ex- 
ceptions to  this  almost  universal  law,  and  have 
not  left  behind  them  the  ruin  of  an  altar  or  a 
temple,  unless  the  rude  mounds  of  our  Ohio 
Valley  may  be  such. 

But  to  the  south  of  us — in  lands  more  fertile, 
beneath  skies  more  blue  and  in  an  environment 
where  life  was  stimulated  to  more  rapid  devel- 
opment— the  more  refined  and  cultivated  Mexi- 
cans erected  temples  whose  ruins  still  fill  the 
mind  of  the  beholder  with  wonder. 

When  Cortez  and  his  companions  wandered 
about  the  City  of  Mexico  under  the  leadership 
of  their  native  guides,  they  took  their  way 
from  the  bustling  scenes  of  the  market  place 
to  the  great  Trocalli.  It  occupied  the  spot 
which  probably  had  been  consecrated  to  the 
gods  from  the  foundation  of  the  city,  but  the 
enormous  structure  which  loomed  before  their 
astonished  eves  had  been  completed  in  i486. 
It  was  a  work  of  rude  but  sincere  art.  It 
was  imposing.  It  was  awe  inspiring.  It  rose 
in  pyramidal  form  to  a  vast  height.  It  was 
inhabited  (or  rather  haunted)  by  ferocious  and 
terrible  priests,  whose  hands  were  busily  plying 
the  axes  with  which  they  sacrificed  their  hu- 
man victims — hundreds  of  thousands  of  whose 

198 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

skulls  were  piled  in  heaps  in  sacred  chambers. 
Their  ritual  was  somber,  their  music  grotesque 
and  horrible;  but  all  was  in  keeping  with  the 
awfulness  of  the  sanctuary  itself. 

It  might  seem  at  first  that  it  would  be  safe 
to  argue  that  every  instinct  which  could  prompt 
such  bloody  and  such  brutal  deeds  was  evil,  and 
should  be  exterminated.  But  a  more  chaste  and 
sober  reflection  has  taught  us  that  no  instinct 
can  be  uprooted;  but  must  be  educated  and 
developed.  It  was  not  that  the  instinct  of  wor- 
ship was  wrong,  but  that  it  found  a  wrong 
expression!  And  so  their  human  slaughters 
in  their  temple  do  not  throw  any  genuine  sus- 
picion upon  that  holiness  of  the  original  instinct 
which  built  the  temple ;  but  only  demonstrates 
that  it  needed  a  perfect  evolution.  It  was  still 
an  instinct,  and  in  obeying  it  they  yielded  to  a 
power  which  has  been  resistlessly  impelling 
men  to  perform  this  sacred  function  in  every 
age  of  recorded  history. 

And  this  same  impulse  took  possession  of 
a  multitude  of  savages  in  England  long  cen- 
turies before  that  country  was  known  to  the 
Romans.  It  drove  them  out  upon  Salisbury 
Plain,  two  miles  from  Amesbury,  in  Wiltshire, 
and  there,  with  songs  and  incantations,  they 
erected  a  structure  so  strange  and  weird  as  still 
to  attract  the  feet  of  pilgrims. 

199 


Hits  and  Misses 

Reconstruct,  if  you  can,  with  the  aid  of  your 
imagination,  the  scene  in  which  the  hordes  of 
semi-civilized  beings,  who  adored  the  supreme 
Power  which  they  saw  manifested  in  primeval 
forests,  foaming  oceans  and  heavens  ablaze 
with  lightning,  marched  around  this  temple  of 
Stonehenge  to  rude  music  and  resounding 
hymns —  and  remember  that  it  was  as  much 
an  instinct  for  them  to  do  this,  as  for  the  wild 
beasts  to  seek  their  food  in  forests,  or  the  eagles 
to  build  their  nests  upon  a  crag. 

It  was  this  same  instinct  in  the  hearts  of  the 
men  of  that  great  race  which  issued  from  the 
rich  earth  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile  when,  cen- 
turies before  recorded  history,  they  erected 
those  temples,  the  sublimest  type  of  which  is  to 
be  found  in  ruins  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  on 
the  site  of  ancient  Thebes. 

It  created  similar  forms  of  architecture  in 
Asia.  In  ancient  Babylon  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  men  labored  to  erect  that  vast  pile, 
upon  the  top  of  which  the  priests  worshiped 
and  the  astronomers  watched  the  stars ;  and  in 
India  the  pilgrim  uncovers  his  head  in  awe  at 
the  labor  and  the  devotion  which  carved  the 
temple  of  Ellera  from  a  single  isolated  rock, 
creating  thus  a  building  as  large  as  the  Royal 
Exchange,  in  London — a  magnificent  jewel  in 
stone. 

200 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

It  came  like  a  divine  madness  upon  the 
ancient  Jews.  At  the  call  of  their  great  King- 
without  the  sound  of  hammer  or  of  axe,  their 
quiet  hands  patiently  and  reverently  fitted  to- 
gether that  material  which  had  been  shaped  in 
far-away  quarries,  foundries  and  shops,  into  a 
building  whose  memory  still  haunts  the  world 
like  a  half-forgotten  dream. 

Nothing  is  more  astonishing  than  the  variety 
of  the  creations  of  this  sacred  impulse.  As 
life  (that  eternal  mystery)  clothes  itself  in  va- 
rious forms  in  the  diverse  regions  of  the  earth 
— the  palm,  the  oak,  the  pine,  the  rhinoceros, 
the  lion,  and  the  gazelle — so  this  all-animating 
impulse  selected  forms  suitable  to  the  different 
characteristics  of  the  worshipers.  Some  of 
them  have  been  horrible  and  ugly  beyond  the 
power  of  language  to  describe;  but  on  the 
Acropolis  of  x\thens,  it  animated  its  devotees 
to  construct  a  building,  whose  perfect  propor- 
tions have  corrected  the  standards  of  taste  and 
the  canons  of  beauty  for  more  than  twenty  cen- 
turies. 

A  few  generations  later,  this  chaste  genius  of 
architecture  revisited  the  world  again,  and  on 
the  site  of  the  Church  of  St.  Sophia,  which  had 
been  erected  by  Constantine,  and  which  was 
destroyed  in  532,  Justinian  summoned  Anthe- 
mius  de  Fralles  and  Isidore  de  Milet  to  do  for 


201 


Hits  and  Misses 

Constantinople  what  had  been  done  for  Athens. 
Not  only  were  the  mines  and  the  forests  com- 
pelled to  furnish  raw  material,  but  the  temples 
of  Ephesus,  Palmyra,  Pergamos  and  countless 
other  cities  were  despoiled  of  their  columns  and 
their  treasures  to  make  it  beautiful  and  sublime. 

''Solomon,  I  have  surpassed  thee!"  cried  the 
enraptured  Emperor,  when  it  was  done,  and 
thus  gave  expression  to  that  human  pride  which 
has  mingled  itself  with  the  pure  devotion  of  all 
the  builders  of  these  sacred  edifices. 

Not  only  the  Jew  and  the  Christian,  but  the 
fierce  and  relentless  Mohammedans,  felt  the 
inward  motions  of  this  constructive  impulse. 

Consolidated  from  the  fierce  tribes  of  the 
desert,  and  animated  by  the  majestic  spirit  of 
Mohammed,  the  Mussulmans,  in  their  turn, 
sowed  their  sacred  mosques  broadcast  over 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.  But  their  devotion 
culminated  not  in  an  original  structure.  They 
adopted,  altered  and  reconstructed  St.  Sophia, 
and  it  stands  to-day  as  their  testimony  that 
they,  too,  have  been  animated  by  a  mysterious 
and  irresistible  emotion,  which  has  compelled 
them  to  build  or  to  dedicate  a  building  where 
men  might  worship  God. 

But  never  in  the  history  of  humanity  did  this 
instinct  reveal  itself  so  powerfully  as  in  the 
Middle  Ages. 

202 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

To  give  expression  to  a  feeling  is  to  realize 
it  (make  it  real),  and  as  matter  is  the  language 
of  the  spirit,  it  is  the  medium  of  its  realization. 
Thoughts  float  idly  across  the  mind  till  they 
have  been  precipitated  in  print,  painted  on  can- 
vas, carved  in  marble,  or  cemented  in  stone. 

And  so  they  built  "those  everlasting  piles, 

Types  of  the  spiritual  church  which  God  hath  reared." 

Stone  in  them  seems  to  lose  its  stubborn  na- 
ture as  it  soars,  in  obedience  to  the  infinite  as- 
piration of  the  soul.  They  are  the  world's  most 
striking  instance  of  the  spirit's  power  to  sub- 
due matter,  since  it  is  matter  of  the  most 
obstinate,  solid,  concrete  kind. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  we  can  form 
some  vital  and  vivid  conception  of  the  might 
and  majesty  of  the  operation  of  this  instinct 
for  sacred  architecture  in  this  wonderful  epoch. 

A.  In  the  first  place,  by  reflecting  upon  the 
wide  extent  of  territory  and  the  immeasurable 
masses  of  material  in  which  it  operated. 

The  whole  known  Occidental,  and  not  a  little 
of  the  Oriental  world,  was  dotted  with  the 
products  of  the  constructive  genius  of  that 
wonderful  era.  Seen  from  the  upper  air,  these 
constellations  of  temples  would  resemble  the 
constellations  of  the  stars  as  seen  from  the 
earth. 


203 


Hits  and  Misses 

The  citizens  of  every  great  metropolis  were 
seized  by  an  ungovernable  impulse  to  express 
their  religious  feeling  in  imperishable  stone. 
Great  provinces  were  called  upon  by  Bishops 
for  offerings,  and  a  willing  and  eager  people 
poured  out  their  money  like  water. 

Their  ardor  and  enthusiasm  were  never  sur- 
passed and  probably  never  equaled  in  any  spirit- 
ual movement.  The  visions  of  those  structures 
which  they  were  to  erect  floated  before  their 
minds  in  enticing  beauty.  Millions  of  the  com- 
monest people,  incapable  ordinarily  of  cherish- 
ing large  and  lofty  conceptions,  became  the 
almost  passive  instruments  of  a  sublime  ardor. 
The  rich  gave  of  their  wealth  and  the  poor  of 
their  poverty.  Artists  spent  the  best  years  of 
their  lives  in  working  out  their  ideals  on  can- 
vas, in  wood,  or  in  marble.  Workmen  became 
absorbed  in  their  toil  and  swallowed  up  in  the 
immensity  of  their  task.  The  lords  and  ladies 
of  high  degree  permitted  themselves  to  be  har- 
nessed like  beasts  of  burden  by  the  side  of 
artisans  and  beggars,  to  trucks  upon  which 
great  stones  were  loaded,  and  hauled  them  over 
country  roads  and  through  city  streets  to  the 
accompaniment  of  sacred  songs  and  harps  and 
cymbals. 

These  edifices  were  centuries  in  process  of 
erection.      The  architects  who  planned  them 

204 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

died  and  gave  place  to  successors.  The  gener- 
ation which  began  them  passed  away,  some- 
times before  their  foundations  were  fully  laid. 
The  next  reared  the  superstructure,  but  never 
saw  the  roof  or  tower.  The  third,  or  fourth, 
or  fifth,  following  in  their  footsteps  and  inher- 
iting their  enthusiasm,  laid  the  capstone  with 
rejoicing. 

The  mind  of  the  student  of  this  tremendous 
movement  of  religious  ardor  is  stupefied  by 
its  intensity,  its  beauty,  its  results.  Passing 
through  England  and  gazing  upon  St.  Paul's, 
Westminster,  Durham ;  entering  France  and 
contemplating  Rouen,  Chartres,  Rheims,  Notre 
Dame ;  Germany,  and  trembling  at  the  grand- 
eur of  Cologne  and  Strasburgh,  and  Italy,  to  be 
dazed  and  bewildered  by  Pisa,  Milan,  Orvieto, 
Sienna,  Florence,  St.  Mark's,  and  St.  Paul's 
without  the  gates  and  St.  Peter's  within,  and 
scores  of  other  lesser  lights,  he  feels  that  some 
awful  power  above,  as  real  as  that  which  lifts 
the  tides,  has  lifted  the  thoughts,  the  aspirations 
and  the  hopes  of  men  to  heaven.  Such  an 
instinct,  he  feels,  is  rooted  and  grounded  in  the 
depths  of  human  nature.  Men  have  done  these 
deeds  because  the  central  power  of  their  being 
impelled  them.  Such  labors  are  as  true  and 
necessary  a  function  of  the  life  of  man  as  the 
clearing  of  forests,  the  transportation  of  articles 

205 


Hits  and  Misses 

of  commerce,  eating,  sleeping,  sowing,  reaping. 
The  emotive  instinct  may  have  been  perverted. 
Its  perversion  may  have  led  man  to  deeds  of 
atrocity,  but  the  instinct  itself  must  be  divine ! 

B.  But  there  is  another  way  in  which  its 
might  and  meaning  may  be  detected  and  felt. 

It  is  by  pausing  before  a  single  one  of  these 
majestic  fabrics  and  studying  it  in  detail. 
Choose  which  you  may — be  it  Cologne,  Milan, 
Rouen,  or  Rheims — a  careful  survey  of  the 
entire  structure  will  leave  upon  the  mind  the 
same  awe-struck  impression  which  remained 
on  that  of  Lowell  before  the  Cathedral  of 
Chartres,  as,  "following  some  fine  instinct  in 
his  feet,  and  looking  up  suddenly,  he  found  his 
eyes" — 

"Confronted  with  the  minster's  vast  repose. 
Silent  and  gray  as  forest-leagured  cliff 
Left  inland  bv  the  ocean's  slow  retreat, 
That  hears  afar  the  breeze-borne  rote,  and  longs, 
Remembering  shocks  of  surf  that  clomb  and  fell, 
Spume-sHding  down  the  baffled  decuman, 
It  rose  before  me.  patiently  remote, 
From  the  great  tides  of  Hfe  it  breasted  once. 
Hearing  the  noise  of  men  as  in  a  dream. 
I  stood  before  the  triple  northern  port, 
Where  dedicated  shapes  of  saints  and  kings, 
Stern  faces  bleared  with  immemorial  watch. 
Looked  down,  benignly  grave,  and  seemed  to  say : 
'Ye  come  and  go  incessant;   we  remain 
Safe  in  the  hallowed  quiets  of  the  past. 
Be  reverent,  ye  who  Hit  and  are  forgot, 
Of  faith  so  nobly  realized  as  this!'  " 


206 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

Nohly  indeed !  Made  real  indeed !  As  the 
poet  ''followed  some  fine  instinct  in  his  feet," 
and  looked  up  suddenly — those  mighty  builders 
followed  some  fine  instinct  in  their  hearts  and 
built  up  loftily  and  mightily  in  everlasting  stone 
the  deep  emotions  of  their  souls ! 

If  there  were  only  one  such  building  in  the 
world,  the  student  of  the  life  of  man  might  not 
pause  in  his  search  for  the  solution  of  the 
mysteries  of  this,  his  marvelous  being,  until  he 
had  found  what  potent  inward  motion  of  his 
spirit  had  put  it  forth. 

But,  as  we  have  already  seen,  it  is  universal — 
not  unique.  The  erection  of  these  edifices  is 
confined  neither  to  localities,  nations,  nor 
epochs.  It  is  as  invariably  a  function  of  hu- 
man life  as  plowing,  and  reaping,  and  spinning, 
and  weaving. 

We  must  permit  our  eyes  to  roam  over  the 
whole  wide  world  to  grasp  the  full  sweep  of 
its  operations.  We  must  recall  the  mosques 
of  the  Mohammedans,  the  temples  of  the  Hin- 
dus and  the  pagodas  of  the  Chinese — the  ter- 
rible Jumna  Marjed — Juggernaut — the  porce- 
lain tower  of  Nankin — and  the  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  smaller  reproductions  of  their 
grandeur  and  their  glory  scattered  over  those 
mysterious  regions. 

Nor  is  this  phenomenon  an  evanescent  phase 
207 


Hits  and  Misses 

of  rudimentary  instincts  and  vanishing  emo- 
tions, whose  manifestations  are  confined  alone 
to  the  ancient  and  medieval  world.  The  last 
born  race  and  its  last  bom  generation  has 
come  into  being  impregnated  by  this  divine 
aspiration  to  construct  temples  in  which  to 
worship  God  !  The  virus  (if  virus  it  be)  burns 
as  hotly  in  its  veins  as  in  those  of  any  who  have 
wandered  beneath  the  stars  in  wonder  and 
looked  out  upon  infinity  in  awe. 

It  may  be  that  the  operation  of  this  instinct 
in  this  new  land  of  America  is  not  calculated 
to  impress  the  imagination  so  much  by  the 
grandeur  and  sublimity  of  its  architectural  ex- 
pression, but  it  does  so  even  more  by  the  power 
of  its  moral  sentiment. 

Never  from  the  beginning  of  our  history  has 
a  colony  of  these  mysterious  ephemera  which 
we  call  men  swarmed  from  the  old  hive  into 
a  new  one,  be  it  upon  seacoast,  prairie  or  moun- 
tain summit,  but  with  swift  and  indefatigable 
instinct  these  tiny  workers  have  reared  a  tem- 
ple at  the  same  time  when  they  builded  a  fire- 
side, a  trading  place  and  a  schoolhouse !  Noth- 
ing can  prevent  this  action — nothing  interfere 
with  the  performance  of  this  function!  As 
certainly  as  the  sun  germinates  the  seed  they 
sow  in  the  furrows  and  constructs  the  graceful 
forms  of  wheat  and  corn  and  vine,  the  divine 

208 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

Power  that  broods  upon  their  souls  compels 
them  to  rear  over  their  heads  the  roof  of  a 
sanctuary  in  which  they  may  safely  and  rev- 
erently bend  before  the  great  All  Father. 

Infidels  and  atheists  may  scoff  at  this  in- 
stinct and  prophesy  its  disappearance,  but  they 
can  not  explain  it  and  they  can  not  destroy  it. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  or  so  ago  Robert 
Ingersoll,  addressing  an  audience  of  skeptics  in 
the  little  village  of  Watkins,  ventured  the  as- 
sertion that  the  course  of  the  Christian  religion 
was  nearly  run,  and  that  it  no  longer  possessed 
the  vitality  to  propagate  itself.  His  words 
were  transported  across  the  continent  to  Chap- 
lain McCabe,  who  telegraphed  him :  "Go  on 
with  your  scoffing.  We  are  building  a 
Methodist  church  every  day  in  the  year!" 

They  are  building  more  now!  And  every 
little  community  and  every  great  aggregation, 
is  still  imbued  with  this  structural  spirit,  and 
still  animated  by  this  architectural  impulse. 
Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  America  is 
to  be  a  land  of  churches ! 

When  you  stop  the  birds  building  nests,  the 
beavers  dams,  the  coral  insects  islands,  and  men 
and  women  homes  to  shelter  their  own  heads 
and  protect  the  tender  forms  of  their  offspring, 
you  may  hope  to  have  them  cease  the  erection 
of  temples  for  the  worship  of  God. 

209 


Hits  and  Misses 

Awed  by  this  mystery  of  our  being,  we  recall 
the  memorable  words  of  Plutarch  which  the 
lapse  of  ages  has  proven  to  be  not  only  history 
but  prophecy,  that  men  traveling  on  the  earth 
might  "find  towns  and  cities  without  walls, 
without  letters,  without  kings,  without  houses, 
without  wealth,  money,  theaters,  gymnasia, 
while  nowhere  had  been  seen  or  would  be,  any 
city  without  temples  and  Gods,  without  pray- 
ers, divinations  and  sacrifices,"  and  that  ''a  city 
might  sooner  be  built  without  ground  on  which 
to  fix  it,  than  a  community  to  be  constituted 
void  of  religion,  or  being  so  constituted  be 
preserved." 

We  have  now  pursued  the  channel  of  our 
thought  to  that  sacred  spot  where  the  stream  of 
reason  mingles  itself  with  the  ocean  of  rever- 
ence and  adoration.  For  there  is  always  a 
place  at  last  where  we  encounter  the  insoluble 
mysteries  of  being,  and  nothing  remains  for 
us  but  to  prostrate  ourselves  before  the  Creator 
in  our  ignorance  and  love. 

We  may  trace  this  instinct  through  its  mar- 
velous revelations  of  itself  in  shrines  and  tem- 
ples, to  its  fountain  spring  in  the  soul  of  man. 
But  when  we  arrive  at  this  point  we  can  go  no 
farther.  It  was  God  who  made  this  spring  to 
flow !     It  is  He  who  implanted  the  instinct  of 


2IO 


Temple  Building,  a  Universal  Instinct 

worship  and   of  temple  building.     We  build 
and  worship — for  we  must. 

Be  it  ours  to  eradicate  the  evil  from  this  in- 
stinct if  we  can !  Let  us  cast  out  all  supersti- 
tion and  unreason !  Here  let  us  rejoice  and  be 
glad  that  there  have  been  no  horrid  incanta- 
tions over  this  temple,  that  no  human  victims 
have  been  offered  nor  animal  sacrifices  been 
slain !  But  if  there  be  in  any  human  heart  a 
thought  unworthy  of  its  God  and  of  this  place, 
let  us  drive  it  out,  and  all  be  pure  and  holy  here, 
as  father  and  mother  and  little  children  are 
pure  around  the  hearthstone,  and  the  angels  of 
God  are  pure  around  the  great  white  throne. 


211 


PRINTED  BY  R.  R.  DONNELLEY 
AND  SONS  COMPANY  AT  THE 
LAKESIDE  PRESS,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 


